


and i'm trying to keep from going under

by twilightstargazer



Series: our hearts are like firestones [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dirty Talk, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Exes, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Firefighter Bellamy Blake, Oral Sex, Paramedic Clarke Griffin, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:15:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 56,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22535350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightstargazer/pseuds/twilightstargazer
Summary: Clarke doesn’t need Bellamy Blake to be nice to her. And she certainly doesn’t feel the need to be nice to him either.Still, sometimes she would catch him unawares, grinning at Raven or ruffling Monty’s hair or snickering at a bad joke Miller just told, and her heart would do that awkward flip in her chest to remind her that once upon a time, they had that together.Whatever.That’s in the past.-or, Clarke Griffin gets assigned to Firehouse 47 which would be fine if it didn't force her to work in close contact with her ex boyfriend, Bellamy Blake.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Series: our hearts are like firestones [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131611
Comments: 262
Kudos: 922





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chants_de_lune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chants_de_lune/gifts).



> happy birthday meg! you're a star and one of my favourite people i've met in this fandom <3
> 
> there aren't enough firefighter/ paramedic blarke aus out there which is absolutely TRAGIC. truly one of the best tropes in existence. of course, i can't talk about this trope without mentioning [Weave Me A Myrtle Crown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7128977) aka the best firefighter/paramedic fic ever. seriously. go read it. then cry about it. then cry some more because it's not finished.
> 
> as always, i am not a paramedic or a firefighter or even from the US so i have no idea how anything works so please suspend your belief and let's just all agree that we're here for some good fanfiction-y shit. title taken from burning up by the jonas brothers because i'm a special kind of trash
> 
> [playlist for this fic](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/68nHBjG6EvkN148zzeZN93?si=udJWBAiPRcedJFwOujTKdg)

Clarke is nervous as she readjusts her uniform for the umpteenth time that morning. She stares at herself in the mirror, cataloguing her appearance, everything from her hair held back in a neat braid to the starched, crisp dark blue shirt she wore to the nametag pinned beneath the patch pronouncing her a paramedic. Her eyes catch on the small lapel pin, the silver 47 glinting in the morning light.

Her new station number.

The station where she’s set to be the newest paramedic starting from today.

There’s that familiar roil of nerves and excitement in her belly and she straightens her shoulders, glancing at the clock on her nightstand. She should probably leave now if she planned on making it in time for her first shift.

Arkadia was a small town with a population of just a couple thousand which meant that there were only a handful of fire stations littered throughout, with Firehouse 47 being the largest.

Now, Clarke stands in front of it, mustering up the courage to head inside. She can feel her heart thumping in her throat and she takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself before she walks up the front steps and heads inside.

There’s already a considerable crowd of people milling about, some now clocking in and some getting ready to leave, and she even spots a few familiar faces amongst them, like Monty and Raven, the latter of which regards her with an impassive look, single eyebrow raised. Still, she gives them a hesitant smile and a small wave before ducking around the corner to talk to the receptionist.

The receptionist-- a small, mousy lady named Fox-- leads her to Fire Chief Pike’s office, giving the door a quick knock before leaving Clarke there with a smile.

She doesn’t wait long, Fox has barely cleared the corner when the door opens and Pike smiles down at her.

“Clarke Griffin,” he says, offering his hand to her, “Good to see you again.”

“Chief Pike,” she nods, accepting his handshake, “The pleasure is all mine.”

She’s met him a few times before, both while she was growing up in Arkadia and when she returned looking for a job. He’s stern and a bit rough around the edges, but he gets shit done and that’s all that matters to Clarke.

“Please, come in, have a seat.” He holds the door open for her as she slips inside, sinking into an armchair by his desk. Pike takes a seat opposite her and steeples his fingers together.

“Let me be the first to officially welcome you to forty-seven,” he says, “We’re honoured to have someone with such outstanding credentials like yourself working with us.”

“Thank you,” she says in return.

“Your mother must be so glad to have you close to home again.”

“She is,” she says, smile going tight for a second. Things with her mom are-- okay. They’re certainly not back at the level of antagonism they were when she was in college, but Abby still thinks that she could do better than being a paramedic. It’s something that they’re still working on.

They don’t spend too long chatting-- Pike isn’t a man of many words and he is most definitely not a fan of small talk-- so it’s only a few minutes later that they leave his office as he gives her a tour of the place. He shows her everything, from the garage to the supply rooms, the dorms to the showers, before finally taking her to the common room where the rest of the squad were hanging out.

Arkadia is small enough that she already knew most of them. 

There was Monty and Raven from before, who she had gone to both high school and college with, sitting at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee each. Miller, who she knew only for her senior year in college, was leaning against the wall texting on his phone. Another blonde haired girl whose name she thinks she remembers being Harper, who was a year beneath her back at high school but they were on the cheer team together. Those were the only faces that jumped out to her but she still can’t help herself, scanning the room for a pair of dark eyes and messy curls and more freckles than she thought possible.

“Clarke Griffin, meet the squad here at forty seven,” says Pike, pulling her out of her thoughts. It was a good thing that he did that. She certainly has no business scanning the crowd in hopes of finding her ex boyfriend. She and Bellamy most definitely did  _ not _ part ways on good terms, that’s for sure.

Pike introduces her to them, calling out all of their names in a quick, dizzying fashion and then frowns when he realises that someone was missing.

“Miller,” he says, “Where’s Blake? I thought I told all of you to be here this morning to meet our new paramedic?”

“He’s in his office, chief,” Miller tells him, “Finishing up his report on the warehouse fire from yesterday. Said he’d be here in a few.”

Pike shakes his head and mutters something under his breath that Clarke couldn’t catch..

“I’m here, Chief,” a voice says from behind them, and Clarke stiffens immediately.

God, no matter how much she mentally prepared herself for this, how many pep talks she gave herself on the way here, the sound of his voice is still enough to send a shiver down her spine. Clarke briefly closes her eyes as she turns around to face him.

Bellamy Blake hasn’t changed much in the past five years she realises as he saunters in.

He’s still all tanned skin and messy hair and too many freckles to count but he’s grown some questionable facial hair and, judging from the way he fills out the dark polo, grown some more muscles as well. Clarke’s heart flips embarrassingly in her chest when she sees him and it’s all she can do to try and stop the flush from staining her cheeks when his eyes flick towards her for just a half a second.

“Sorry,” he says to Pike, “You told me to have that report for you bright and early. I was just following instructions.”

“Finding loopholes you mean,” Pike snorts and Bellamy’s lips quirk up.

God, it’s unfair that after all this time he still manages to look good. Clarke  _ hates  _ him.

Pike glances back at Clarke. “This is Lieutenant Bellamy Blake,” he says, assuming the two of them would need an introduction. “Bellamy, this is Clarke Griffin, the new paramedic assigned to our house.” He fixes him with a stern look. “I trust you’ll show her the ropes around here?”

“Yes sir,” he says, keeping his face impassive as he looks back at her.

“Good. Now that that’s sorted I have some things to attend to. Clarke, lovely to have you here. If you have any questions I’m sure Bellamy would be happy to answer them,” says Pike as he begins to leave, the tour very clearly coming to an end.

_ Yeah right _ , she wants to scoff, glancing over at the carefully laid mask Bellamy was wearing. Instead she just flashes him a polite smile and says, “Of course. Thank you, Chief Pike.”

She waits until he disappears before chancing a glance at Bellamy, only to find him already looking at her, face still impassive as he appraises her. Their eyes meet and his already stoney face hardens even further.

“Griffin,” he says coolly.

“Blake,” she replies, matching his tone.

Around them the common room is quiet, watching them, and Clarke has no doubt that he told them that his ex was to be their new paramedic which. Great. Just what she needs. All of her new coworkers to think that she’s some sort hysterical  _ woman  _ who can’t keep her private life private.

“Gotta say,” he starts, crossing his arms over his obnoxiously broad chest as he looks down at her, “I was surprised when Pike said you were transferring here.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” she asks, trying to inject every single ounce of boredom into her tone as she regards him. She will not give him the satisfaction of knowing that he still has the power to get under her skin even after five years. Clarke doesn’t think she could handle the size of his ego if she did.

“Oh you know,” he shrugs, “Thought you would have gone crawling to mommy and asked her to pull a few strings for you to work for the hospital instead. I’m sure Abby Griffin thinks that working as a firehouse paramedic is  _ beneath  _ her precious daughter.”

Clarke’s not gonna lie, his words do sting a bit and she finds herself blinking at the end of his little tirade.

_ Don’t let him get to you  _ she chants in her head. He’s doing it on purpose to rile you up. Don’t give him the satisfaction.

The old Clarke would have pushed back. The old Clarke would have gotten all up in his face to prove her point and the old Bellamy would have smirked at her, letting her yell herself hoarse before pushing her up against a wall and kissing her senseless.

They always did have the  _ best  _ angry sex together. 

But that was years ago and now the  _ present day _ Bellamy was staring at her cold and hard while his harsh words hung in the air waiting for her to deal with it.

So Clarke pasted on a polite smile and dealt with it.

“You’re right. I  _ am  _ more than qualified for this position. But Arkadia General has more than enough paramedics at their disposal and Firehouse 47 only had one for the past few months. So I came here.” She cocks her said to the side and looks at him, polite smile still in place and Bellamy grits his teeth. He always hated it when she put on that mask. It used to freak him out with how easy it was for her to compartmentalise and become completely devoid of emotion at the drop of a hat. “Now, do you have any other questions for me Lieutenant Blake, or am I free to go?”

“Free to go, Griffin,” he says, looking at her through narrowed eyes. “And welcome to forty seven.”

* * *

Clarke’s first month at the house is… interesting.

She makes quick friends with Monty, the other paramedic attached to the station, bonding over their shared love of old sci fi films and figuring out which 7-eleven has the worst tasting coffee in the district. He’s a good medic and they work well together as a team. She likes the feeling of having him on her side.

She also becomes close to the other girls on the squad, like Harper and Monroe and even Raven, although it took at least a week for the latter to warm up to her enough for them to have a full conversation. Monty told her not to take it to heart, it was just because Raven and Bellamy were close, just like how Miller and Bellamy were close. Still, she was having full conversations with Miller on her first day as opposed to Raven who seemed to be judging her silently from the sofa.

In fact, Clarke would say she’s  _ at least _ acquaintances with everyone on the squad, even Roan, who’s more than a little strange, and Murphy, who she’s pretty sure is doing something shady on the side.

She’s cool with everyone except for  _ Bellamy _ .

It’s not like she didn’t  _ try _ .

Her first few weeks here she barely spoke to him, barely acknowledged the barbed comments he threw her way under his breath as he tried to elicit a reaction. It didn’t work. It was annoying, but Clarke was able to grit her teeth and ignore him as she got her job done. 

The only time they were moderately civil to each other is when they were out in the field. She was still wary of him on a personal level but Clarke had no doubts in his professional capacity no matter how much of an ass he could be at times.

And then came the day on the freeway.

An accident involving a semi and four cars leaving multiple victims and a traffic nightmare for motorists to face. As soon as they got the call the squad suited up and got in the truck in record time, peeling out of the station before Monty could even get his keys in the ambo’s ignition. Clarke hesitated, just for a brief moment, before racing back inside to grab another field kit. An accident like this meant multiple victims which meant that she needed to have enough supplies to deal with all of them. She was just being safe.

It took only a minute if so much, for her to grab the extra kit and hop in, Monty trailing after the truck and squad. They pulled up just after they did, a team from Firehouse 38 already there setting up a triage.

Bellamy shoulders past her roughly as he jogs to the nearest overturned car and Clarke is able to brush it off as something that just happens in the moment. She doesn’t have time to worry about Bellamy. 

“Monty,” she calls out as she slips on her gloves, inspecting the patient groaning in the front seat of a Prius. She doesn’t appear to be bleeding but the car’s banged up pretty badly and Clarke would bet that she is too. “Bring the backboard and a C-collar when you’re coming,” she says before turning to the patient at hand, “Ma’am can you hear me? My name is Clarke Griffin, I’m a paramedic…”

Thankfully it’s not a deadly crash. There are a couple serious but non life threatening injuries, like a few concussions and a man with a leg that’s most likely broken in two places. Still, there are people with multiple lacerations that she has to stitch up and check for any broken or bruised ribs from the force of the seatbelt, and her second kit comes in handy when she has to reach in to pull out a C-collar and another reel of nylon to suture the wounds shut.

It takes them almost three hours to clear crash, although Clarke and Monty leave midway through to take a patient with whiplash to the hospital.

They get back to the station a bit later, having to fill out the necessary paperwork after they dropped off their patient, and by the time they pull in, the truck is already there.

She sees Bellamy stalking back and forth in the garage as they pull in. He’s still dressed in his gear although he shrugged off the heavy jacket, leaving him in a grey shirt with the house’s logo and station number that was patchy with sweat.

Before she’s even out of the ambulance, he’s on her.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Clarke blinks. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, princess,” he hisses at her and she flinches, the old nickname hitting a nerve, “What the hell was that?”

“What was  _ what _ ?” she asks, exasperated.

“That whole ‘running back inside to grab shit’ thing,” he says, still towering over her and she could  _ feel _ the anger radiating off him in waves.

She scoffs. “I was grabbing another field kit, you moron,” she snaps.

“I don’t care what you were doing, when you hear that siren go off, you drop everything and  _ go _ ,” he snarls, “I don’t know if you’ve realised this, princess, but we are literally the difference between life and death for some people.”

She sees red. How dare he accuse her of not taking her job seriously?

“You think I don’t know that?” she bursts, yelling at him for the first time. “I know our response time is crucial, just as I know having the proper equipment to treat someone with is crucial, and having  _ enough of it _ .”

“Yeah? Well maybe next time you should make sure you have enough of this shit  _ before _ we get called into action,” he snaps at her. “We were free all morning and what were you doing? Nothing.”

The accusation hits her like a slap to the face and she feels herself shutting down.

“You better watch what you say, Bellamy,” she says, voice gone quiet, “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

“And I don’t like members of my team demonstrating such  _ incompetence _ \--”

“I am  _ not  _ part of your team,” she snarls, stepping away from him. “You are not my superior and you have no command over me and quite frankly, you should start treating me some respect.”

“This house is mine, Clarke,” he says, still furious at her, and she can see the muscle jumping in his jaw. “These are  _ my _ people and  _ we _ pulled the reputation of this place up with our bare hands. I don’t need you to come here and start fucking up everything we’ve done to get here.”

Clarke draws herself up to her full height which still only manages to bring her up to Bellamy’s chin. Still, she looks him straight in the eye as she says, “If you have a problem with how I do my work Lieutenant Blake then you can take it up with Pike or file a formal complaint to the APA.”

“God, do you always have to act like such a sanctimonious bitch?” he snaps at her.

“Depends, do you always have to act like such a repugnant fuckhead?” she counters back to him.

He spares her one last loathsome glare before stalking off. Or at least, he would if Clarke hadn’t grabbed his wrist and pulled him back to her, close enough that she could see each individual eyelash.

“If you  _ ever _ call me incompetent again, then you and I are going to have problems,” she says to him, her tone of voice leaving absolutely no room for argument.

He glares down balefully at her. “Then do your fucking job,” he says before snatching his wrist out of her grasp. “And stay out of my way.”

“You’re the one who accosted me, asshole!” she calls after his retreating figure.

Clarke leans against the door of the ambulance and sighs, running a tired hand through her hair.

After that incident in the parking garage, it seemed as though a dam had been unleashed between them.

Now, whenever Bellamy made a dumb quip about her, she would sling one right back at him and if they’re not careful, it would lead to a full blown fight. More often than not someone would have to step in and break things up before a line could be crossed. Still though, they’ve said some pretty nasty stuff to each other over the past few weeks.

_ “God, would it kill you to care about someone else for a change?” _

_ “I don’t know, would it kill you to show some basic human decency for a change?” _

_ “Oh my god for once in your life shut the fuck up. No one cares about what you have to say.” _

_ “Sounds like you’re projecting your mommy issues on me, Princess.” _

_ “Why do you always have to be such a selfish bitch?” _

_ “Who fucking pissed in your cornflakes this morning grandpa?” _

_ “Go to hell, Bellamy” _

_ “Well I’m already here with you, aren’t I?” _

It was amazing how one person could rile her up so much with so little words.

But, Clarke would have to admit, other than the whole Bellamy issue, her time here at Firehouse 47 has been pretty great so far. Monty has learnt off her coffee order by now so they take turns bringing each other every day. At the end of her first month at the station, Raven pulled out a bottle of contraband tequila and she, Harper, Monroe and Clarke all took a celebratory shot together (once their shifts finished of course). Gabriel turned out to be a fan of the same books series as her and they end up giving each other recs and swapping novels every Friday in the common room.

The only one she doesn’t get along with, even after two months at the station is Bellamy. They continue to fight about everything but, after that day in the garage, he no longer criticises her about her work and she doesn’t say anything about his. It’s the only thing that’s off limit between them.

Well, that and their past relationship.

But it’s whatever, Clarke doesn’t  _ need _ Bellamy Blake to be nice to her. And she certainly doesn’t feel the need to be nice to him either.

Still, sometimes she would catch him unawares, grinning at Raven or ruffling Monty’s hair or snickering at a bad joke Miller just told, and her heart would do that awkward flip in her chest to remind her that once upon a time, they had that together. The grins and the jokes and the comforting touch.

Whatever.

That’s in the past.

Clarke can’t even stand to be in the same room with him anymore, much less entertain the possibility of  _ liking _ him again.

She and Bellamy Blake are _over_ in all sense of the word and she’s certainly not going to let something that ended _five_ _years ago_ affect her job here.

Bellamy was just going to have to deal with it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Trying to get the princess to come down from her ivory tower to hang out with us plebs, Raven?” says Bellamy as he walks in, hair wet, and fixing the collar of his polo. He slides into the seat next to her, the only available one at the table, and Clarke can smell the fresh scent of his body wash. “You know she thinks she’s too good to hang out with us.”
> 
> “Fuck you, Bellamy,” Clarke says mildly as she cuts her bacon into pieces.
> 
> “You already have. Several times actually,” he shoots back at her, voice low enough that no one else at the table could hear but it still causes Clarke’s face to turn blotchy red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember when i said chapters were gonna be 4k long? lol yeah i lied. anyway happy valentines day and shout out to beliza for reminding us that love is, in fact, real and not something that we just made up for the fanfics.

_ 5 years ago _

There’s nothing better than a lazy Sunday morning.

Clarke loves to just lounge around her apartment in her pyjamas, eating excessively sweet cereal while watching YouTube or catching up on whatever series she was watching at the time. It’s something that she’s been doing since she was a kid, spending the whole morning curled up on the couch with her dad as they watched whatever was playing on PBS kids that day. The tradition has followed her into adulthood and nothing could top it.

Well.

Almost nothing.

Clarke’s willing to wager that waking up with Bellamy could  _ maybe _ top her Sunday morning cereal and TV ritual.

It’s not something they get to do all the time. Clarke’s still in school and shares an apartment with two other people while Bellamy is working two jobs and trying to care for his sister. Hardly ever do their schedules line up and allow them to stay over with each other but when it does, they take full advantage of the fact.

The sunlight was streaming in through his blinds and Clarke groans, trying to roll away from it. Beside her she hears a faint chuckle and cracks an eye open to glare balefully at Bellamy, who was slumped against the pillows, scrolling through his phone and looking unfairly good while he was doing so.

The blankets were pooled at his hips putting far too much tanned, muscled skin on display for Clarke to handle at the moment. She just woke up. She doesn’t  _ need _ to be reminded about how disgustingly hot her boyfriend is at the moment.

She groans again and shuts her eyes, blindly flinging out her hand so she could slap his stomach. He just laughs again.

“You know, you need to get up eventually,” he says, combing his fingers through her tangle of hair.

“Or, counter point, I could stay here and hibernate for the next few months,” she replies, pushing her head up in his hands. Clarke  _ likes _ getting her hair played with and Bellamy knows this.

“It’s April,” he snorts, “What animal is still hibernating in  _ April _ ?”

“Me,” she grumps, and then frowns when he laughs at her again before swinging his feet off the side of the bed.

“Well you can continue hibernating if you want,” he says, stepping into a pair of low slung pyjama pants and stretching. Clarke takes a moment to observe the vee of his hips, the ripple of his stomach, the way his biceps flex when he stretches his arms above his head. “I am going to make breakfast.”

“Waffles?” she asks, a little hopefully and he smiles at her.

“Whatever the hell you want, Princess,” he rumbles as he steps closer to drop a kiss on the crown of her head. 

Clarke stays in bed for a few more minutes, just breathing in the scent of the sheets, fresh linen and laundry detergent and  _ Bellamy _ , before stretching and hopping out of bed and making for the bathroom. She tries to be quick about it, brushing her teeth and washing her face, but by the time she comes out, Bellamy already has the waffles going while he cuts up some fruit.

He flashes a lopsided grin at her when he sees her standing in the doorway to the kitchen and she hip checks him when she walks over to grab the coffee mugs from the cabinet.

“Brat,” he says fondly, slapping her ass and making her shriek.

“Your brat,” she teases, sticking her tongue out him. Bellamy leans over and kisses it.

They’re mostly quiet as they finish preparing breakfast. Bellamy doesn’t have a coffee maker, just keeps a jar of the shitty instant stuff in the fridge, so Clarke tries her best to make it taste good before she sets the table. She doesn’t mind the silence. In fact, she rather likes the silence between her and Bellamy. It’s comfortable.

Still, they can’t help but tease each other while they finish up things. She trails her fingers across his lower back in the area that she knows he’s sensitive in when she’s passing behind him to grab the plates and he gets back at her by passing the cold whipped cream can against her neck when he grabs it from the fridge.

“Dick,” she says, reaching out to pinch his nipple in retaliation. He’s still not wearing a shirt and she’s pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose just to annoy her. Bellamy is a safety freak, always wearing an apron and even mittens if necessary while he’s cooking. There’s no way he would accidentally forget to put on a shirt while cooking.

“You started it, Princess,” he says, returning the favour and tweaking her own nipple through her shirt. Clarke feels the flush threatening to make an appearance on her cheeks.

“Shut up,” she says, grabbing the bowl of fruit from the counter and placing it on the table. “I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” he says, voice gruff, and when she turns back around, he’s watching her with that  _ look _ in his eyes.

Clarke bites her lip.

He hitches a brow, the beginnings of a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

She glances over at the clock on the stove.

“I told Luna I would meet her at the library by 9:30 to study for our biology final,” she says, “Gotta make sure we get all A’s for those med school applications.”

He snorts and rolls his eyes, still smiling. “Uh huh. Med school applications.”

“Shut up,” she says, thumping him in the stomach.

“Make me.” He grabs on to her wrist, pulling her close so that their foreheads are almost pressed together.

She shoots him an exasperated look, one which Bellamy replies to by flashing her a boyish grin.

“Go and eat your breakfast,” he says, even as he continues to hold her close. “We’ll get a raincheck.”

“Raincheck,” she snorts, “As if I’m not coming right back here later tonight.”

“Octavia’ll be home,” he says and she groans softly.

“Okay, fine. Raincheck,” she agrees before rolling up onto the balls of her feet and kissing him softly.

(He still follows her into the bathroom after, and gets her off hard and fast with his fingers in a way that leaves her panting into the crook of his neck. And after an orgasm like that, well, it would be rude to  _ not _ repay the favour.)

(She’s ten minutes late to her study session with Luna, but it’s alright, Clarke doesn’t care.)

* * *

“I am going to actually murder him,” Clarke mumbles against the crook of her elbow, glaring balefully at Bellamy as he pulses the blender to make his green juice. 

It’s just after 6 a.m. and here he is, fresh as a motherfucking daisy as he putters around the station kitchen, wearing a pair of faded joggers and an old AFD t-shirt while drinking his  _ green juice _ . Clarke absolutely  _ loathes _ him.

In the almost three months that she’s been at Firehouse 47, Clarke has learnt several things about Bellamy. The first being that he was one of those annoying morning people which, okay, she already knew that, but he was one of  _ those _ people, the kind to mix protein into their celery juice and run 5 miles all before the sun was properly up. The second thing she learnt was that every time they had an early call time, he would be the first to show up and the first to get out there and start running drills.

And the third thing she learnt was that Bellamy, unfortunately, still managed to look unfairly  _ hot _ after those drill sessions, all sweaty and flushed, even with the beard, which Clarke has decided that she hates.

It’s annoying.

She watches as he adds another handful of kale to the blender before putting it on high once more.

_ He’s _ annoying.

Just as she’s contemplating the merits of strangling him with the firehose, a hand appears waving a mug of steaming coffee in front of her face, effectively derailing her train of violent thought.

Clarke takes the mug from Monty with a sigh, scalding her tongue as she hastens to take a gulp. Monty snickers as he drops down on the couch next to her.

“You won’t get coffee like this if you go to jail for murder,” he says to her as he sips on his beverage, a fragrant herbal blend of tea. Clarke would love to be like Monty, who drinks several cups of tea throughout the day but alas, she’s a caffeine gremlin who isn’t functional without a vat of coffee in the mornings.

“You could sneak in for me,” she says, “I’m sure between the two of us we could charm the warden.”

“Because that sounds reasonable.” He taps her foot with his. “Didn’t you swear an oath to do no harm?”

“I did. It was also mentioned in that oath that we’re to alleviate suffering. I’m suffering and his death would alleviate it.”

Monty snorts, trying his best to hide his smile but fails. “You’re impossible.”

She presses her shoulder against his. “I’m hilarious.”

Bellamy snorts as he walks past them and Clarke immediately snaps her head around to glare at him.

“What.”

“Nothing.”

She glares at him harder and Bellamy just rolls his eyes, taking a swig from his bottle as he heads out to the training yard.

“Fucking asshole,” she mutters at his retreating figure. Beside her Monty whistles lowly.

“You know, I thought you guys would have cooled down by now,” he says, and now it’s his turn to be glared at.

“I am not  _ gossiping  _ with you about my ex, Monty Green,” she hisses at him, prodding the space between his ribs with her bony fingers and making him yelp. “We are at  _ work _ . That would be  _ unprofessional _ .”

“Fine, you can gossip with me about it on Friday,  _ after  _ work,” he says, smiling a little slyly. “Our first proper weekend off in a while. We’re gonna get  _ so  _ wasted.”

“I never agreed to this,” she protests, but it’s clearly in vain because Monty just  _ cackles _ and drains the rest of his tea.

The rest of their day goes by rather slowly and mostly uneventful. The squad only gets called once for a kitchen fire mishap and Monty and Clarke are in and out a few times, dealing with fainting spells, a rock climbing incident gone wrong, and a teenager who got a busted head on a dare. All in all it was a pretty easy day.

Clarke’s restocking the dextrose solution in the ambo after they pull in from their last call when Raven walks struggling to hold the bags of groceries.

“Need a hand?” Clarke asks, looking over her shoulder at her.

The other girl grunts, fumbling to keep the contents of the shopping bags from spilling out. “If you’re not too busy.”

“Nah I’m done here,” she says as she pushes the drawer closed and secures it. She wipes her palms on her pants before jogging over to Raven and taking two of the bags from her. “Grocery run?”

“We need sustenance,” she nods as she shoulders open the door to the kitchen, “Blake is drilling our asses out there. Seems like an easy day so he’s pulling out all the stops. Asshole,” she says fondly.

Clarke hums noncommittally as she packs the groceries in the fridge-- milk, orange juice, eggs, those chocolate covered wafers that Miller loves so much. Raven is a neutral party when it comes to Clarke and Bellamy. They both know better than to put her in the middle of their fights since Raven might actually strangle them.

“Anyway, I offered to make the food run because God knows I can’t scale the drill tower more than two times without my knee giving trouble,” she says, trying to keep her voice upbeat but Clarke can see the way she slams the cabinets shut with more force than necessary.

She doesn’t know what to say to that. Raven hates pity. Clarke knows about her knee of course, everyone at the house does, but Clarke went to high school with Raven, who was just a year older, and remembers how it actually happened. How her boyfriend was drunk and driving home from a party at the end of senior year, just a week before graduation when he slammed into a car carrying a family of five while doing 40 over the speed limit. She was the only one involved in the crash that survived, leaving her with a bum knee and a lifetime of trauma. Not exactly laughing matter.

“Well,” she starts, “Next time you need a buddy to make a run with, I’m your gal.”

It gets a snort out of her. “And risk having one of our two paramedics out of here in the case of an emergency? After Chief and Bellamy get done with me, there’ll be nothing left.”

Clarke laughs. “You’re Raven fucking Reyes, I’m sure you can handle anything.”

She bares her teeth in a truly frightening grin and bumps her shoulder into hers. “Damn right I can. Now pass me a jug from under the sink. I promised this sorry bunch that I’ll make them lemonade.”

“Lemonade? What are you, five?”

“Can it Griffin,” she says, throwing a lemon at her. Clarke manages to catch it right before it could smack her on the forehead. “Get to juicin’.”

She helps Raven make the lemonade before being dragged outside (“Come on, it’s the last few days of summer, your pasty ass could use some sun.”) to watch them run drills.

Clarke has only been out in the drill yard once or twice since she got here, having no need to practice lugging around gear or climbing up the tower. She’s a paramedic. She’s not the one running into burning buildings to save people, that’s the squad's job. She and Monty are there to see about them after they’ve been removed from imminent danger.

It seems that everyone has decided to take advantage of the slow workday and the last bit of summer sun, even Chief Pike who stands off to the side with a whistle strung around his neck and a stopwatch in hand.

Monty waves her over to where he’s sitting, having found a few folding beach chairs from god knows where, and she grabs two cups of lemonade before she goes over.

“I’m so glad we don’t have to do that,” he says as they watch Gabriel throw the heavy coil of the firehose over his shoulders before climbing up the ladder. “I would probably keel over and die within the first five minutes.”

“I’ll make sure to have the oxygen on hand just for you,” she says absentmindedly as she looks at Bellamy out of the corner of her eye.

He’s got his shirt off, because of course he does, leaving him in a pair of dark cargos and his heavy work boots. He’s not the only one half dressed-- most of the boys were shirtless and Harper had swapped her cargos for a pair of running shorts. It’s sweltering outside and Clarke could feel the sweat pooling in her bra from the moment she stepped outside so she can’t really blame them but.

Does he really have to strut about looking like  _ that  _ without a shirt on?

Clarke knew he gained a bit more muscle since she last saw him all those years ago but knowing it and seeing it are two very, very different things. His biceps are the size of tree trunks and she can’t help the way her eyes linger on the sharp jut of his hip bones, making a perfect vee that pointed down to his--

“What were you saying about professionalism this morning?” Monty murmurs next to her.

“Shut up,” she says, cheeks going red. “Just because I think he’s an ass doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the view.”

“Uh huh,” he says, that knowing sparkle still in his eye. 

“Besides, don’t act like you weren’t drooling a couple minutes ago when Miller and Harper competed to see who could do more push ups,” she shoots back at him and Monty just grins.

“Hey, my friends are hot, I’m not denying that,” he shrugs. “I’m leagues ahead of you on this front.”

“I never denied that he was hot,” she scoffs.

“Just denied that there were other reasons behind that stare.”

“There’s nothing else going on between us. I hate him and he hates me. Simple,” she says, face gone stoney as all traces of humour get sucked out of her.

Monty shakes his head. “I’ve known Bellamy for a long time now and I know that he never acts like this with anyone else.”

“It’s the aforementioned hatred,” she says wryly.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, he can be a lot to handle sometimes, especially when he’s pissed, but Clarke, you’re the only one I’ve ever seen who’s managed to get under his skin like this.” He pauses for a second before tacking on, “And well maybe his sister but that’s another can of worms that we are not going to open right now.”

“I’m not sure I like being compared to his  _ sister _ ,” she says, wrinkling her nose.

Obviously Clarke knew about Octavia. She was still in high school while the two of them were dating but despite there being a four year gap between the two of them, Clarke and Octavia couldn’t stand each other.

To put it simply Clarke thought Octavia was selfish and ungrateful considering that her brother essentially put his life on hold to take care of her while Octavia hated Clarke for, well, she wasn’t exactly sure, but she assumes that she hated anything that brought her brother the slightest bit of joy.

“I didn’t mean it like  _ that _ ,” says Monty, “Don’t make it an incest thing.”

“I am not making it into an  _ incest thing _ .”

He grins at her and she shoves his shoulder with a disgruntled harrumph.

“I’m just saying, deny it all you want, but I certainly don’t think about my exes from years ago like that. I don’t feel anything for them at all,” he says and she sighs.

“Look, Monty,” she starts, taking a sip of her lemonade, “Bellamy and I… yeah, we’ve been broken up for over five years but it wasn’t a pretty breakup. We both said shit that I don’t think we could ever come back from, okay? Plus you know, we  _ work _ together.”

He slumps back in his chair. “ _ Fine _ . I guess I’ll let it go for now. But I’m telling you, Griffin. No one acts like that unless there’s some residual feelings hidden deep, deep within.”

“Again, that residual feeling is pure hatred.”

“If you say so.”

“Shut up and drink your lemonade.”

* * *

Friday comes fast, and with it comes their first weekend off in a long time.

Clarke was looking forward to going home and drawing a bath, maybe setting up her laptop so she could watch some Netflix while she relaxes with some wine, but the squad has other ideas.

“We’re going to the Dropship later,” Raven tells her as she piles on some eggs and bacon on to her plate as she slides in her seat by the table. Clarke and Monty were stationed on call last night which meant she spent the night in the dorms when they weren’t out there saving lives and all that jazz. Technically they’re still on shift and won’t be off for another twelve hours, but hey. They need to eat.

“The Dropship?” she asks as she pulls out the green peppers from her eggs and places them to the side. Raven loves making scrambled eggs with veggies for everyone which Clarke doesn’t usually mind. She just doesn’t like the peppers.

“Monty’s friend’s bar,” she explains, “Jasper. He brews his own shit. It’s gonna knock you out.” Clarke is genuinely worried about how excited Raven seems about the prospect of alcohol poisoning.

“I don’t know how I feel about starting my weekend drunk off my ass,” she says wryly as she butters a piece of toast.

“Come on Clarke,” wheedles Raven, “You have to come. It’s like, a rite of passage being a member of 47 to get shitfaced there. Ask anybody.”

“Trying to get the princess to come down from her ivory tower to hang out with us plebs, Raven?” says Bellamy as he walks in, hair wet, and fixing the collar of his polo. He slides into the seat next to her, the only available one at the table, and Clarke can smell the fresh scent of his body wash. “You know she thinks she’s too good to hang out with us.”

“Fuck you, Bellamy,” Clarke says mildly as she cuts her bacon into pieces.

“You already have. Several times actually,” he shoots back at her, voice low enough that no one else at the table could hear but it still causes Clarke’s face to turn blotchy red.

“That was uncalled for, you stupid dick,” she hisses at him and he opens his mouth to come back at her with his own acidic retort but Raven gets there first, pointing her spatula menacingly at the two of them.

“ _ Enough _ ,” she says, glaring at them both. “You,” she jabs the spatula at Bellamy’s direction, “You don’t have to be a complete dick all the time, you know that right? We’re all just trying to have a nice family breakfast and you decide to bring your drama and issues into it. Take it outside next time. And you,” she turns to Clarke who goes wide-eyed. “You’re coming out with us this evening. You can’t keep skipping on group outings, Griffin. We’re a  _ family _ , goddammit.”

She lifts her hands in surrender hoping that it’s enough to get the bright orange silicone spatula out of her face. “Alright, alright, I’ll be there.”

“Good,” says Raven before glaring at her again, “And eat your peppers.”

“No, they’re gross,” she says and Raven glares at her a bit more before leaving her be, deciding instead to go yell at Harper for not eating enough carbs.

Clarke surreptitiously slides her green peppers on Bellamy’s plate when he’s not looking, too busy arguing with Roan about some sports game or something like that, and Gabriel pretends not to see from across the table.

Bellamy frowns at his plate when he notices the extra peppers but he doesn’t say anything, just shovels them in his mouth along with the rest of his breakfast.

Clarke and Monty have the firehouse mostly to themselves for the rest of the day since the squad went to a nearby elementary school to raise awareness on fire safety. Raven keeps on sending them pictures of a horrified Roan covered with at least three first graders, and Harper mugging for the camera with a group of girls, all of them standing in the iconic Rosie the Riveter pose. She also sends one of Bellamy in the truck with a little boy on his lap which Clarke maybe stares at for too long but it’s fine. No one saw her.

On their end Clarke and Monty only have a few calls to respond to in the morning, minor things like a sprained ankle on a hiking trail and a carbon monoxide scare. But it isn’t until after lunch, when Monty is trying to do the dishes while flicking soap suds Clarke’s way do they get called to attend to a GSW over in Polis.

They drop everything immediately, getting geared up and in the ambulance in less than five minutes. Clarke has dealt with more than her fair share of GSWs in her years of working as a paramedic and she knows just how bad they can be. In the ten minutes it takes them to get there she already has all the equipment they might need: alcohol pads, bandages, a suture kit.

The police are already there when they pull up and Clarke is out of the ambo before Monty even puts it in park.

Right off the bat she’s briefed by one of the officers that there are two other people with injuries, less severe, but still requiring medical attention nonetheless. Clarke nods at him before yelling to Monty to radio for back up, just in case, before they get to work, setting up triage.

“I’ll handle the GSW, you take the other two?” Clarke says as she pulls on a pair of gloves. “One’s the victim’s girlfriend, got scratched along the ribcage by a stray bullet. Police don’t know who the other victim is as yet but he’s got a pretty bad head injury and possibly signs of a concussion.”

Monty nods. “I’m on it,” he says before grabbing his field kit and making a beeline towards the second victim who was sitting on the stairs, surrounded by a pair of officers and holding a bloody rag to his head.

Clarke turns to her gunshot victim, taking a deep breath.

Thankfully it’s not a serious wound. The victim is a young man, early twenties, and the bullet went straight through the muscle of his shoulder. It’s messy and probably hurts like hell, but chances are he’s going to live. Still, Clarke doesn’t waste any time, jumping right in and starts cleaning the wound while trying to scrape together a history for the man. He seems to still have sensation in the injured arm, which is a good sign, and she applies some lidocaine jelly around the area to help him with the pain. Blood is still sluggishly oozing from the wound when she’s done cleaning it so Clarke applies a tourniquet and a fresh bandage before calling Monty over to help her get him in the back of the ambo.

The second ambulance arrived while she was in the middle of cleaning and Monty hands off his patients to them before he comes over to assist Clarke.

“All good?” she asks as she ties off the end of the bandage.

“Yeah. Girl’s fine-- it was just a scrape so I just put some antiseptic cream on and smacked a bandage on it. She’s heading down to the station right now to give her statement,” he says, helping her wheel the stretcher in. The guy looks a bit out of it and Clarke is well aware that he’s lost a fair amount of blood.

“That’s good. Pass me a bag of saline,” she says, setting up a port to give him the drips, hoping it’ll help. He’s probably hypotensive from all the blood loss and the last thing CLarke needs right now if for him to go into shock. “The other guy?”

“Four stitches on the brow, more than likely concussed. Other group is taking him to Arkadia Memorial right now.”

“Great,” she says, stripping off her gloves after she’s done stabilizing their patient. “Let’s get out of here too.”

The next two hours pass in a blur to her. They get to the hospital and hand off their patient and then they’re stuck writing up their report.

By the time they get back to the station the squad is already back and there’s only a few more hours left for their shift.

They all call out their hellos when the two of them stumble into the common room and Raven immediately passes her a cup of coffee. She sighs as she takes a giant gulp, savouring the hit of caffeine to her system.

“Heard y’all had an eventful afternoon,” says Harper, bumping her shoulder into Monty’s from where she was perched on the arm of his chair. 

He snorts. “I don’t know. Wrangling a bunch of preschoolers sounds pretty eventful to me.”

“Oh it definitely was. Just asked Roan.”

The other man glares at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It was  _ awesome _ . Those pictures are going up on the wall for sure.”

Clarke finds herself smiling as the two of them bicker back and forth and she slumps down a bit further into her seat at the table. Eventually she’ll get up and shower, having hate to remain in her uniform after a particularly bloody call like that. She feels like she can still smell the metallic tinge of blood.

Someone nudges her elbow and she glances over to see Bellamy, looking disgruntled as usual. She sighs inwardly, much too tired to tell him to fuck off at the moment.

“Here,” he says, sliding a granola bar her way. Clarke blinks down at it.

“What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me, Griffin,” he grumbles, “I know you probably on had like a handful of Skittles and a Rice Krispie treat for lunch.”

It was actually a cream filled doughnut and a large vanilla latte, but Clarke’s not about to tell him that.

She squints suspiciously at the wrapper, examining everything from the expiry date to the ingredients. Next to her Bellamy scoffs. “Just checking to make sure it’s not poisoned.”

He shoves his shoulder into hers. “Just eat the damn granola bar, Clarke.”

Bellamy slides off the chair, leaving her alone, and Clarke stares at the snack, still skeptical. Eventually she does cave and eat it, but she makes sure to do so when Bellamy isn’t watching.

They don’t have anymore calls for the rest of the day and Clarke is thinking about trying to sneak home to get out of going to the bar with the rest of them but Raven corners her when she’s getting out of the showers.

“Jesus,” she swears, when she rounds the corner only to find her perched on top the counter by the sinks. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re terrifying?”

“Not nearly enough,” she says, flashing her a razor sharp smile as she hops down. She’s holding Clarke’s bag in one hand, the one she snuck in here in hopes of sneaking out the back to get home as soon as she was done showering. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re not as sneaky as you thought?”

She shrugs sheepishly, the flush of colour dusting her skin not just from the hot water of her shower. “I was gonna use it to get dressed?” she tries, and Raven does not look impressed.

“Come on, Clarke, it’s just one night,” she tells her, “You never hang out with us. I know Bellamy can be a pain sometimes but is it really that bad that you rather not hang out with us at all?”

“It’s not that,” she sighs, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “It’s just-- I like to keep work and my social life separate okay?”

She thinks back to Chicago, to Lexa and the mess that followed. The mess that could have been avoided if she hadn’t mixed work and play together.

Lexa was a trauma surgeon at the hospital that Clarke was assigned to when she finished her studies. She was older, more confident and self assured and Clarke fell  _ hard _ from the moment their paths first crossed. Soon she went from stumbling and tripping over her words in the hallways of the hospital to hanging out at her ridiculously posh apartment, listening to her tell stories about vacationing in Ibiza and backpacking through India in order to open her third eye.

Back then Clarke thought Lexa was  _ cultured _ , the way she used to don a bindi and smoke out her entire apartment on weekends with incense before meditating in order to align her chakras. Now she realises that she was just doing what all white girls do after visiting a place like that, taking what she wanted from it and twisting things to fit her needs without consulting anyone else.

“Last time I tried mixing things… well, let’s just say it didn’t work out and leave it that, okay?” Clarke says, wincing as she thinks back. She still remembers how she got shafted for a promotion after two years of working for the hospital. How it was Lexa’s doing when she told the person in charge of making the decision that Clarke was too young, too inexperienced to handle a position like that.

“I get that,” says Raven more gently this time, “But with this kind of job, that’s pretty difficult, y’know? I mean, we work 24 hour shifts. We all eat and sleep under the same roof. It’s kinda hard to separate it.”

She sighs.

“Come on, just one night,” Raven wheedles. “I promise we won’t ask you again.”

Clarke is still a bit hesitant to agree but Raven is looking at her so earnestly that she finds herself saying, “Okay fine. But just for tonight.” 

“Great!” she grins, “Now get dressed. Gabriel and Roan drew the short straws so they’re driving.”

She flaunts out of the bathroom, no doubt to inform the rest of the team that she’s successfully convinced her to come along with them, and Clarke groans, resting her head against the cool porcelain tile for a moment.

Getting dressed isn’t particularly difficult when she only has about three or four outfit options at the station and one of those is her uniform. In the end Clarke settles on a henley and some jeans and tries to make it look more bar appropriate by throwing on some mascara and lipstick that she’s had in her purse for who knows how long.

The Dropship is located in the centre of the city itself, and is a sort of hipster meets grunge kind of bar. The walls are exposed brick with lots of neon lighting and quirky signs, but all the tables and even the actual bar itself are made out of some sort of matte coated metal with visible rivets and raw edges.

The owner of the Dropship, Jasper Jordan, Monty’s aforementioned best friend, is a tall, wiry looking guy who seems to be vibrating on the spot and talks a mile a minute. Clarke’s honestly only ever seen that much energy in a person who’s been doing Adderall. Still, he’s a nice guy and he hooks them all up with a free round of strawberry flavoured moonshine.

They all cheers, clinking their glasses together, and Clarke gags as she swallows it, feeling like all of her insides have been set on fire.

“Oh my god,” she sputters while they all laugh at her. Harper runs a soothing hand down her back. “That’s terrible.”

“I think you mean delicious,” says Monty, a twinkle in his eye as he takes another sip.

“If you guys do this on the regular then I truly am sorry for all of your livers.”

She hears Bellamy snort and has to bite her tongue to stop from saying anything to him. She came here to get drunk, not pick a fight with her ex.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, especially when he says, “It’s called having fun, Princess. I don’t know if that’s something you’ve heard of before.”

Clarke really should have just ignored him but instead she just lifts a brow and says, “I can have fun, Bellamy.”

And then, like any reasonable adult, she chugs the rest of her drink all while holding his stare.

All around her the squad is screeching like crazy but she only has eyes for Bellamy, who’s smirking at her a little, a mocking glint in his eyes.

He knows exactly what he’s doing.

That’s the thing about trading blows with your ex, they know exactly how to get to you, just like how he knows she’s incredibly competitive and loves to prove people wrong. He only had to say a few little words and she’s all riled up.

“I need another fucking drink,” she grumbles and Monty slaps her on the back before calling out to Jasper to get her one more.

Clarke probably drinks a bit too much in too little time, finishing off three more cups of moonshine as well as a round of tequila shots but fuck it, she’s having  _ fun _ . She dances with Raven and Harper and Monroe, trying to be sexy and do body rolls but having it come off more like she was doing the electric eel. She tries to play pool with Roan and Gabriel but she sucks at pool, even when she’s sober, so she tries to get them to play Jacksonville style pool like she learnt from Jason from  _ The Good Place _ .

The world is definitely a little hazy at the edges and she doesn’t know how she ended up back in the booth, sandwiched between Monty and Miller, but there she is, head resting on her partner’s shoulder while she laughs too loudly at Miller’s story about his first call as a firefighter to help get an actual cat stuck in an actual tree.

“I didn’t think that happened in real life,” she giggles, wiping her eyes. She’s been laughing so much that her eyes were watering, smudging her mascara but she doesn’t care. “I thought that was a thing only in movies.”

“Oh it’s real. I still have the pictures,” says Bellamy. For some reason he’s sitting with them at the booth too, opposite Clarke. He’s got a bottle of beer in front of him, condensation beading down its sides.

“I  _ need _ to see that.”

She’s making grabby hands for his phone when their server arrives with a platter of nachos and a couple bottles of water. She sets the nachos down in front of Bellamy and leaves them with the water before disappearing into the back.

“Ah, sucks about the jalapenos,” says Miller, nodding towards the nachos. 

“It’s fine,” Bellamy shrugs, “I forgot to tell them when they were taking the order.”

“You’d think by now Jasper would realise that no one on the team likes jalapenos.”

“Except for Clarke,” interjects Monty, “Clarke  _ loves _ jalapenos.”

She nods solemnly, struggling to open a bottle of water. “That’s true. I love foods spicy enough to make my mouth go numb. They’re  _ awesome _ .”

“You can have the nachos then,” says Bellamy, sliding the plate over. “I’m gonna go get another drink.”

He slides out of the booth, wiping his hands on the front of his jeans while Clarke chows down the nachos, shimmying in her seat as she eats. It only occurs to her then that she hasn’t had anything to eat since the granola bar Bellamy gave her when they came back after the call and that she was absolutely  _ starving _ . It also explains why she got so wasted so quickly.

Monty opens her water for her and she pecks him on the cheek in thanks.

Clarke doesn’t drink much more the rest of the night, switching to water instead, although she can’t say no to Raven when she drags her over to do one more fun shot. This one is pink and glittery and tastes like bubblegum.

She dances a bit more, tries and fails to play actual pool, tries and actually succeeds in playing darts against Murphy, and by the time eleven o’ clock rolls around Clarke is tired and little bit sweaty but possibly the happiest she’s been in a while, hugging all of her friends as they sway out of time to the Abba playing on the speakers.

The combination of nachos and at least two bottles of water have helped to soak up all of the alcohol and Clarke breaks away from the massive cuddle pile on the dance floor to go use the washroom. 

She’s still a bit wobbly and the bright neon pink panelled hallway leading to the bathrooms isn’t exactly helping matters. Still, she manages fine enough, getting in and out without much issue and even manages to touch up her lipstick in the mirror.

She doesn’t mean to but when she pushes the door open to leave, she notices a darkened alcove at the end of the hallway and manages to make out the forms of a couple, clearly in the midst of a very heated makeout session. 

Clarke, always having been too nosy for her own good, squints at them, noting the broad shoulders and messy hair, and her jaw actually  _ drops  _ when she realises that it’s  _ Bellamy _ with a  _ girl _ .

He’s got her pressed up against the wall, with one of her legs looped around his hip as she grinds up against him and Clarke would bet that if the bass wasn’t making her bones vibrate she would hear her breathy sighs and moans from here. She can’t really make out any features of the girl other than the fact that she’s tall with dark hair and probably gorgeous, and Clarke can’t seem to look away.

How many times has she been in that exact same position with Bellamy?

How many times did they make out in the alley behind the dingy campus bar that he used to work at, how many times did he wriggle his hand down the front of her pants and get her off right there in public where anyone could have seen?

She feels her cheeks warm as she realises that she’s been staring at them for far too long and she ducks her head, looking away. There’s another feeling also, a warmth blooming in the pit of her stomach and she forces herself to ignore it. Clarke makes a 180 and heads back in the bathroom, splashing some water on her face and trying to push all thoughts of Bellamy and his mouth and hands and  _ other girls _ out of her mind.

(She wonders if she feels good and then has to banish the thought from her mind. Even at their worst Bellamy could make her feel good. He had a gift.)

“I think I’m gonna call an Uber,” she tells Raven when she finally makes it back out. They’re all sharing a giant sized platter of nachos, no jalapenos, extra salsa. The booth is struggling to hold all eight of them, leaving Raven to perch on the edge of the table while Harper shamelessly spreads herself across Monty and Monroe’s laps.

“You good?” asks Raven, giving her a critical once over and Clarke smiles at her.

“Yeah I’m fine. Just tired,” she says. She gives her a one armed hug. “Thank you for pushing me to come out tonight. I had fun.”

“Hope this means we see you back here again soon,” she teases, wiggling her fingers at her.

It gets her to crack a smile. “Maybe.”

She stays inside with them, shooting the shit while she waits on her Uber. It turns out that Monroe took enough pictures to fill an entire scrapbook and Raven promises to actually make one titled ‘Griffin’s first night out’ for her. They even pick one to go on the wall, a group selfie of all of them crowded into the booth right after Clarke chugged her first cup of moonshine. If she looks closely she can still see the challenging stare she was giving Bellamy which she elects to ignore. Bellamy is the only member of the squad that’s conspicuously missing and no one bothers to say anything about that.

When her Uber finally arrives, there’s one last round of goodbyes and she promises Raven to text her when she’s home safe. 

Clarke is still a bit drunk when she gets back to her apartment and it’s a bit of a struggle to get her key into the lock but she manages, kicking her shoes off and throwing her purse on the couch as she sends Raven a thumbs up to let her know she’s home.

All she really wants to do is crawl into bed and go to sleep but she’s sticky with sweat and reeks of alcohol so she resigns herself to a shower, throwing her hair up into a bun with a promise of washing it in the morning. She does not want to have to deal with that right now. She’s not nearly sober enough for it at the moment.

Finally, once she’s all dried and dressed in her pyjamas, teeth brushed and water bottle filled on her nightstand, Clarke collapses into bed with a sigh.

… Except she can’t fall asleep.

Her skin feels too tight, the room too warm, an undercurrent of electricity buzzing in her veins like a livewire. Every time she closes her eyes she sees Bellamy and that girl at the bar and it’s the most  _ frustrating _ thing to ever happen to her. She has half the mind to pull out her vibrator just to take the edge off but Clarke draws the line about actively fantasising about her ex in order to get off.

Her subconscious on the other hand has no such qualms about that.

When she finally does drift off sometime around 2 a.m, after trying everything from counting sheep to listening to a podcast, she dreams of him.

In her defense, she doesn’t realise it’s him at first.

She dreams of hands cupping her breasts, fingers tracing her nipples and teasing them until they’re peaked and aching, a deliciously heavy weight resting in the cradle of her hips. Her hands are tangled in thick hair, the silky locks making it hard for her to keep a good grip on it.

He presses blunt teeth to the inside of her thigh and she yelps, jerking with it.

“Come on, Princess, you gotta behave,” he says, lips tracing the junction of where her hip meets her thigh.

Bellamy glances up at her, a wicked sort of mirth dancing in his eyes as he sends her a smirk. “You know you’ll get exactly what you want if you have a little patience, baby.”

She just snorts and wiggles her hips and he laughs at her, flicking a finger across her nipple. “Relax.”

At least he finally takes pity on her because she can feel his breath ghosting across her centre, his mouth so close yet so far from where she wants it to be.

Clarke remembers back how much he loved to eat her out when they were together. He could go at it for hours, making her come over and over until she was boneless and melting into the sheets or the complete opposite, teasing her until she was shaking and practically begging him to come.

It’s clear that her subconscious remembers all of those things, because when he finally pays attention to her, he’s going slow, lightly lapping at her folds, tongue peeking out to graze her clit hello ever so often. It only adds more kindling to already slow burning fire that’s been in the pit of her stomach since she saw him at the bar with that girl.

“I bet you missed this,” he says, voice muffled by his lips which were pressed up against her wet flesh. “No one eats your pussy like I do, huh Princess.” He has an arm banded around her hips, holding her down to the bed so she can’t move and for some reason it makes things so much hotter, being completely at his mercy.

“Fuck,” she breathes in sharply when he lets his teeth graze over her clit. She doesn’t know when his fingers got involved but they’re there, two of them, pumping slowly in and out of her cunt.

Time moves strangely in dreams. She can feel herself getting closer and closer to the peak, and it feels like he’s been going at it for hours, giving her pretty little cunt the love that it’s been lacking for the past couple of months. Clarke doesn’t care about all the implications of the dream, too far gone in the haze of pleasure that’s washing over her.

“You gonna come for me, Princess?” he mumbles, fucking her in earnest with his fingers. He sucks hard on her clit and her entire body seizing up as she starts to trip towards the beginnings of her orgasm.

He moves his arm from where it was banded across her hips and instead grabs at her hip bones, pulling her down on his face. His fingers slip out and are replaced by his tongue as she starts come, and he lets her hips grind down against his mouth, taking what she wants from him as the pressure that’s been building in her all night finally explodes, shattering her into a million pieces.

“Oh fuck,  _ Bellamy _ \--”

Clarke jerks awake, heart racing and drenched in sweat as her cunt clenches down on nothing. Her phone tells her that it’s only a bit past four and she groans into her pillow before swinging her legs out of bed.

She needs another shower. And a cold one at that.

She tries her best to wash away all traces of the dream but she still can’t help the flush that covers her face and chest when she gets out and she stares at herself in the mirror.

So she just had a sex dream about her ex boyfriend. 

No biggie. Lots of people have sex dreams. Maybe not about their exes, but Bellamy is a good looking guy who she had a ton of great sex with. Plus she saw him in the midst of a hook up earlier tonight.

Obviously her subconscious is gonna take that and run with it.

It doesn’t mean  _ anything _ .

Still, when she goes back to work on Monday she finds that she can’t quite meet his eyes without her face rivalling the colour of their firetruck.

(The dream still doesn’t mean anything though.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They all sing and scream loudly as he blows out the candles and then take turns smearing the outer layer of chocolate syrup and whipped cream on Monty. Or at least, that’s what it started off as. Soon it devolves into a free for all with Monty getting back at everyone by rubbing his face on them.
> 
> Clarke ends up wearing more of the ice cream than she eats but it’s fine. It’s there, in the bathroom, bent over the sink, hearing the infectious laughter from just beyond the door as she struggles to rinse the sweet, sticky stuff out of her hair that she realises how much she loves these people. It’s only been six months but she’s found herself caring far more about her coworkers here at Firehouse 47 than anywhere else she’s worked. They’ve become her family, just like Raven said they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay! i had a short semester which meant that my finals were in the first 2 weeks of march. i hope everyone is staying safe during this pandemic <3
> 
> there is a mild trigger warning for death in this chapter. i've put more about it in the author's note at the very end so those that want to know more before they decide to read can, and those who want to remain spoiler free also can. just click 'see end of chapter for more notes'

August slowly releases its grip on them and in less than a blink of an eye they’re thrust into September. With it comes the beginning of cooler weather, a much welcomed reprieve after suffering through the sweltering heat and humidity of the past few months.

Clarke has always loved fall.

She loves the colder weather, loves watching the leaves change colour and bathe everything in shades of gold and red, loves the fall themed foods.

The last one gets her mercilessly teased by her co-workers, especially when she switches over from her normal coffee order to pumpkin spiced lattes.

“You are such a cliche, Griffin,” smirks Raven the first time she walks in with a venti full of the stuff.

“It tastes good,” she defends herself, punctuating her statement by taking a long pull of the drink.

“Yeah, if you’re interested in getting diabetes,” says Monty.

“Ain’t that like, every single basic, white bitch’s favourite drink?” asks Murphy and she flips him off.

“Careful, this basic white bitch is the one with access to all the IcyHot reserved for when Blake puts you through the ringer.”

“That’s mean.”

She shrugs. “But you’d all deserve it. Come on, can’t a girl be a basic white girl in peace?”

“As someone who calls you their friend,” Raven starts solemnly, “No. No you cannot.”

Clarke rolls her eyes.

Everyone else in the common room spends the next couple of minutes ribbing her about the drink, even Gabriel, who’s always nice to her no matter, joins in on the teasing. It’s not mean of course, far from it, and Clarke doesn’t find herself taking any of their little jokes to heart.

The only one who doesn’t have anything to say is Bellamy.

For once he’s settled quietly at the table, sipping his coffee and focusing intently on the kindle in front of him. To anyone else, he might have just appeared to be engrossed in whatever historical non fiction book he was reading this week, but Clarke can’t help but notice the tense way he holds his shoulders.

She thinks about the autumn that they spent together and suddenly the latte doesn't taste as sweet anymore.

-

_ 6 years ago _

Bellamy mimes gagging as he takes a sip from her coffee cup and Clarke socks him in the stomach, snatching it away from him.

“You’re such a  _ dick _ .”

“That shit is  _ disgusting _ .”

“It is  _ not _ .”

“It tastes like someone tried to blend canned pumpkin pie filling with a tub of Foldgers.”

“You’re terrible,” she says, even as she hides a smile.

She’s been doing that a lot more around Bellamy these days, hiding her smiles and laughs and blushes. She met him through a friend of a friend at a bar in the city. He was working, she was drunk, and she’s not entirely sure how she ended up with the cute bartender’s number at the end of the night but hey, she’s not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. So three days later when she finally worked up the nerve, she texted him and asked if he wanted to meet up for coffee.

They’ve been having bi-weekly coffee-- she hesitates to call it a date but if the shoe fits-- for just over a month now and Clarke’s finding it harder and harder to hide her true feelings, the way she gets butterflies in her stomach and finds herself reduced to a blushing, stammering mess.

“As a drink connoisseur--”

“You’re a  _ bartender _ . Half of your drinks are cheap rum and cokes and two dollar tequila shots for broke college students.”

He glares at her but there’s no real heat behind it. “As a drink connoisseur, I’m legally allowed to say that pumpkin spice is the worst flavour known to mankind.”

She gasps dramatically. “You take that back this instant.”

Bellamy continues to tease her for her PSL obsession over the next couple of not-a-date coffee dates and Clarke lets him, sometimes teasing him back and sometimes just content to sit there and let him go on. It’s cute when he gets all worked up like that.  _ He’s _ cute.

Midterms dawn on her mid October and she finds herself missing their bi-weekly coffee sessions for almost two weeks straight. Sure, they’ve been texting and he even called her once to wish her luck before her calc midterm after hearing her complain about how much the course  _ sucked _ , but it wasn’t the same as face to face interaction. Clarke liked having face to face interactions with Bellamy. She liked seeing his stupid smirk and stupid face covered in freckles and liked teasing him about never brushing his hair.

Her last midterm was on a Thursday and it finished at 5pm. Bellamy’s shift at the bar starts at 6pm but Clarke knows he likes to get there early so he has time to prep. It also gives her enough time to leave campus and swing by her apartment for a quick shower and change of clothes. Being the last day of midterms, she was down to an old henley and a pair of sweatpants, both of which weren’t something she’d want her crush to see her in. So she showers and throws on her last semi clean pair of jeans and a blouse that she  _ knows _ makes her boobs look good and heads over to the bar, though not before swinging by her local Starbucks to grab a PSL, just for kicks.

The bar isn’t too busy considering it was just a Thursday, so she doesn’t have to fight to get to the actual bar itself. Bellamy is standing there, wiping down glasses while chatting with one of his coworkers. He doesn’t notice when she walks in, but he certainly does notice when she plops down on the barstool in front of him and his grin is so wide that she’s temporarily blinded.

“Hi.”

“Hey stranger. Long time no see.” He sets the glass down behind the bar and tosses the rag down on the counter. “How were midterms?”

She pulls a face and he laughs. They chat for a couple minutes, mostly Clarke complaining about how hard some of her exams were while Bellamy interjects here and there. She sips on her latte intermittently, and he teases her mercilessly for it.

“I can’t believe you came to a  _ bar _ with your own drink. I should throw you out.”

“I’m your favourite patron, you wouldn’t dare,” she tosses back at him and he grins.

He has his own coffee cup that he steals sips from then and again and Clarke teases him about it too.

“I work here,” he says, “I’m allowed to break the rules a little.”

“What’s life without a little chaos, huh?”

His responding smile is all sharp teeth. “Exactly.” He pauses to take another long sip. “Plus I’m working until midnight today. I need the caffeine if I have to deal with drunken frat guys.”

“Such a magnanimous service to us all.”

He flicks the rag at her and she sticks her tongue out at him.

She doesn’t really take a good look at his coffee cup until he takes his next sip and puts it down right in front of her before turning to accept a box of limes from a coworker. It’s just a standard Starbucks cup but Clarke is quick to notice the three little letters scrawled right above his name (‘Blamey’ this time, he always complains that they never get it right).

“Ha!” she says triumphantly, pointing to the cup. “What happened to pumpkin spice being the worst flavour known to mankind?”

Bellamy rolls his eyes but there’s a dash of colour on his cheeks belying his embarrassment. “It grows on you,” he grumbles, turning away from her.

“Admit it, I was right. It’s a great flavour. I’ve  _ converted  _ you.”

“It’s mediocre at best.”

“And yet you’re still drinking it,” she preens. “I can’t believe you waited until I disappeared from the face of the earth to start drinking it. I’m hurt Bellamy. I thought you’d at least have me there to witness you popping your PSL cherry.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re insufferable sometimes?”

She just grins even wider. “That’s why I keep you around, to keep my ego in check.” She pokes him in the arm. “Seriously, what made you change your mind?”

He mumbles something incoherent under his breath, the flush on his skin becoming even more apparent.

“What was that?”

Bellamy takes a deep breath before looking directly at her. “I said, it reminded me of you. That’s why I started drinking it,” he says, looking her straight in the eye, face blank.

Clarke’s breath hitches.

“Oh.”

He doesn’t say anything, just continues to watch her impassively and Clarke takes a shaky breath.

The ball is clearly in her court, the two of them at a crossroads, and he’s letting her decide where they go from here. It’s almost sweet in a sense.

So Clarke makes a decision.

Slowly, she stands up, giving him enough time to process her response, and then leans across the bar.

The kiss is short and dry and perfunctory but it sends butterflies raging in her stomach nonetheless. Bellamy kisses her back of course, a little eager, and his hand comes to rest on her cheek. They keep it quick though, after all, he’s still at work. But when they pull away his hand remains on her cheek, thumb caressing her cheekbone and Clarke absolutely melts.

“Would you like to go out sometime?” he asks, sounding uncharacteristically nervous for the first time since she’s met him, and she smiles.

“I’d love to.”

Their first date-- first  _ real _ date since they’ve been on several not-a-date dates in the past month and a bit-- is at 1am on a Friday morning at a diner several blocks away from her apartment.

Clarke insists on staying at the bar for the rest of his shift, even though Bellamy tells her that she really doesn’t have to. They chat whenever there’s a lull in customers, about all the normal things they would talk about in the first place like her classes and Bellamy’s online courses and the man in his building who he saw walking his cat that morning. It was just like any other time they’d hung out except now she’s allowed to touch him. She’s allowed to play with his fingers and flash him flirty smiles from across the bar and lean in and peck him quickly on the cheek.

When his shift is over he takes her to a 24 hour diner two streets over that he promises has the best milkshakes. So they get one, chocolate of course because it’s the only valid flavour out of the big three, and they split a burger and fries because Clarke’s not super hungry. She shows him how she likes to dip her fries in her shake, and Bellamy is absolutely horrified. Unlike pumpkin spice lattes he promises that this is one thing he’ll never consume, even in the face of death. She just shrugs and flicks a fry at his face.

He pays, because Bellamy insists that he has to be chivalrous on a first date and Clarke socks him in the chest, making him promise that for the next date she’ll be the one covering the bill. He agrees, even though he can’t stop smiling at the prospect of there being a  _ next _ date.

He insists on walking her home even though they both could have just ordered an Uber, but she doesn’t mind, especially not when it means getting to hold his hand as they walk the couple of blocks back to her place. It’s probably a fifteen minute walk but it passes so fast that when her building comes into view, she’s almost sad about it. She doesn’t want this night to end.

She’s less sad when Bellamy is pressing her up against her apartment door and kissing her thoroughly. Her hands get tangled in his hair and he kisses down her neck, leaving little lovebites to stain her skin. She doesn’t know how long they stand there making out like a pair of teenagers but when he finally pulls back for good, his hair is mussed and he looks well kissed. Clarke’s sure she doesn’t look any different.

Still, she can’t help but pull him back in one last time, kissing soft and slow, languid, as if they had all the time in the world.

“Goodnight Clarke,” he whispers into the still air between them. The moment is perfect and it feels like anything, whether it was speaking too loudly or maybe a particularly loud sigh, would fracture it into a million pieces.

Ruefully, she lets go of his arms and steps back, turning the handle of her front door. 

“Goodnight Bellamy,” she says as she slips inside, struggling to keep the absolutely  _ stupid _ smile off her face as she does so.

She has a good feeling about this, about him.

-

They spend the entirety of breakfast debating the merits of Clarke’s favourite drink, and she lets herself be entertained by all of the blows they direct her way. It was all just in good fun after all.

“You’re outnumbered, Griffin,” cackles Raven after Roan was done with his surprisingly impassioned speech about why it was a terrible flavour. “One against all of us. Just admit that you're wrong.”

“I refuse to concede,” she sniffs.

“Hey wait,” says Monty, “We still haven’t heard Bellamy’s thoughts on the matter. Hey Bellamy!”

The man in question turned around, eyebrow already hitched and Clarke quickly drops her gaze, focusing instead on the truly  _ ugly _ painting behind him. She’s never realized just how horrendous it was up until now, a swirl of orange and green.

“Yes Monty?” he asks, setting down his kindle on the table.

“Thoughts on pumpkin spiced lattes?”

He’s quiet for a moment and Clarke can feel the way his eyes flick towards her for a millisecond.

“I think they’re terrible,” he says, voice booming in the suddenly silent room. “Worst flavour I’ve ever tried.”

The group of them all break out in cheers and Raven announces that ha, now Clarke has to acknowledge that they’re right since she stands alone on the losing team. Clarke just flashes her an absentminded smile as her stupid heart squeezes painfully in her chest.

“Yeah,” she says, sounding tired despite it being the start of the work day, “Yeah, you guys are right. It sucks but I still like it anyway.”

Another raucous cheer goes up in the common room and Clarke quietly slips out to get some air.

* * *

Birthdays, Clarke was quick to learn, are a big thing around Firehouse 47.

The first birthday she experienced at the house was Harper’s, just about a few weeks after she started working here. She still didn’t know them all that well but she still pitched in to get her flowers and a cake and even those helium filled number balloons that were all the rage at the time. 

After that it was Miller’s, who wanted to go see some stuffy play so they all pitched in to buy him a pair of tickets so he could go with his boyfriend. Then came Roan who invited them all on a  _ party boat _ of all things which Clarke declined due to the fact that she was quick to get sea sick. Gabriel’s birthday was the last one they celebrated, a BBQ at his house where Clarke met his wife, Josie, a biologist with a species of butterfly named after her. Up to now Clarke isn’t sure if Josephine liked her or wanted to stab her in the spleen with a dessert fork.

Monty’s birthday is next, in the last week of September, and he’s already told them that they’re going to the Dropship, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. His birthday is on a Tuesday this year and they have the next Wednesday off so Clarke resigns herself to the fact that her liver will be getting a workout no matter what.

Thankfully, the weeks leading up to it don’t bring a lot of serious calls. It’s the usual things like a couple of kitchen fires, accidents on the freeway and some minor home improvements gone wrong. The worst they’ve had to deal with was an accident where a pickup T-boned a Prius. It was the first time she saw them having to use the Jaws of Life to get to the victim who had suffered fractures in both legs and a concussion.

“So, got anything big planned for later?” Clarke asks him on the day of while they attend to a call. It was just a simple fainting spell at a nearby elementary school that any school nurse could have handled, but the victim was elderly so they made the choice to call it in just in case. Unfortunately this led to a lot of questions from some very nosy, very inquisitive kids and she found herself spending more time telling them that no, Mrs Ginsburg was not going to die and yes, they should probably still study for their math test on Friday. Monty found it hilarious.

“Nope,” he says, remaining remarkably tightlipped about the entire thing. Then he grins at her. “If it helps, Jasper is the one planning it and he hasn’t even told  _ me _ what’s going on. All I know is that I vetoed some band called  _ Wonkru _ . I can handle alcohol poisoning but I draw the line at terrible underground metal music.”

She wrinkles her nose in displeasure as she tugs off her gloves. “Why on earth would he do that?”

“It’s Jasper,” he shrugs, “We always get each other at least one gag gift.”

Clarke couldn’t possibly fathom dropping over a thousand dollars on a  _ gag gift _ so she just smiles and nods.

The rest of their day is more or less uneventful and when their shift is over, Clarke goes home with Raven to get ready.

Raven lives the closest to the Dropship, within walking distance, so she drives them over to her place and promises Clarke that she can have her couch at the end of the night if needed. She’s obviously nothing but genuine but Clarke is pretty sure that she invited her over just to make sure that she doesn’t dip on them.

“It’s a good thing we have tomorrow off,” says Raven as she carefully applies her eyeliner, “Although, knowing Jasper and Monty, we’ll probably need at least seventy two hours to recuperate fully.”

Clarke snorts as she adjusts her top in the mirror. She’s a lot more dressed up than she was last time she went to the Dropship with them, wearing a faux leather mini skirt and a white shirt with a slinky neckline that draws the attention to her boobs. Raven catcalled her when she first stepped out. It’s great.

“Should have stocked up on Gatorade beforehand,” she tells her, fluffing her hair. She already did some light makeup and is waiting on Raven to finish before she pulls her shoes on. “The minute I got the invite I picked up two of the giant sized blue ones from the supermarket and a bottle of extra strength Ibuprofen.”

“Well shit, Griffin, look at you being all prepared,” Raven says, uncapping her mascara with a flourish. “We should just Uber to your place instead. You’ve got  _ stocks _ .”

She smirks at her. “Maybe next time.”

They get to the Dropship about twenty minutes late-- fashionably late, Raven insists on saying. Harper and Monroe are already there, as is Murphy and Gabriel, who brought along Josie. There are also a couple other people milling about that Clarke doesn’t know but are probably Monty’s friends outside of work since the bar is closed off to the public today in order to host the party.

Jasper is already in full host mood, handing out drinks to everyone as soon as they enter and Clarke finds herself with something pale pink and fruity in hand before she even realises.

For the most part, the Dropship looks the same as before except now it was arranged in order to facilitate drinking games. There were stations set up for beer pong, flip cup, never have I ever and even a complicated looking game of pool with different kinds of shots ascribed to the different holes. Clarke feels a thrill of excitement as well as a healthy does of worry as she takes it all in.

They were all going to get  _ so _ wasted.

Jasper tells them that they can’t play any until Monty gets here so they all stand around chatting. Bellamy and Miller turn up about ten minutes after she and Raven, getting graced with their drinks immediately by Jasper.

“You always have to be late huh,” teases Raven when they make their way over to their little group. Even off duty they all still like to be together.

“Gotta make an entrance,” Bellamy smirks and Clarke looks away, focusing instead on the scuffed edge of the table.

He looks good.

Of course, he always looks good, even with the stupid beard. He’s just wearing a hoodie with the sleeves rolled up exposing his tanned forearms and a pair of jeans, but Clarke’s always had a thing for well defined arms and Bellamy definitely lands in that category.

He doesn’t say anything to her as he sidles up next to her, teasing Harper about something or the other, but she doesn’t expect anything less. Though things between her and Bellamy are better, it doesn’t make them less volatile. The slightest of things have been found to set them off, ranging from her dislike of mangoes to whether or not reusable straws are actually useful. It’s for the best honestly.

Still, it stings a little when he talks to every other person besides her at the table. The most she got was a quick appraisal of her outfit where Bellamy kept his face annoyingly blank.

Luckily, she doesn’t have to dwell on it for any longer because the birthday boy finally arrives, announced by the loud pop of several confetti poppers in quick succession. It leaves chunks of glitter and streamers stuck to Monty’s hair but he’s grinning widely, even as Jasper brings out a birthday shot that’s on  _ fire _ .

Suddenly she’s glad that the entire team from the firehouse has been invited and Bellamy must have the same thought as he steps closer to the nearest fire extinguisher.

They don’t need it though and Monty barely winces as he takes the shot.

Jasper grins, thumping him on the back before turning to the crowd around them.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, the  _ real _ party can begin.”

The real party turns out to be everything they were doing before, except now they could play the drinking games, with the added benefit of getting even  _ more  _ drunk when Jasper set up dispensers of moonshine around the bar. Alcohol poisoning was a real threat tonight.

Clarke voices her concerns to Ravens who just shakes her head before doing a shot of something. “Come on, Griffin,” she says, nudging her shoulder, “Live a little. We’re all big boys and girls, we’ll be fine.”

“Just promise me you’ll drink some water in between drinks,” Clarke says, “And eat something.” She reaches out to grab another jalapeno popper. She figures she could probably eat half of them by herself which is fine since no one else on the squad like jalapenos.

“Yes mom,” says Raven with a roll of her eyes. “Now come on, let’s go play some pool.”

And with that she drags her off to the corner where the pool table sat surrounded by pyramids of multicoloured shots. The rules were that whatever colour ball you land in a hole, you have to do that colour shot. It was a disaster waiting to happen. She couldn’t wait.

Clarke wins at pool without actually winning at pool. Meaning out of all of them that were playing, she ended up taking the least amount of shots because she struggled to land a single hole.

“How are you still so bad at this?” asks Bellamy after she failed yet again. This time she didn’t even  _ hit _ any of the other balls. He is the nearest one to her, already several shots in because he doesn’t suck.

“Shut up,” she grumbles, shoving the cue stick his way. He lands the shot of course and has to do a shot of tequila, his third for the night.

“I’m just saying,” he says afterwards, “I thought by now you would have learnt.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to learn,” she says before cutting the conversation short and flouncing away to where Raven was playing darts against Josie and another blonde girl who introduced herself as Bree earlier.

Bellamy had tried to teach her how to play pool while they were dating. There was an old pool table at the bar where he used to work and he tried teaching her a few times but eventually gave up, partially because she was just so terrible and partially because they kept on getting  _ distracted _ .

(“I’m not fucking you on this pool table,” she remembers panting into his neck while he kissed down hers. His hands were slowly inching up her thighs to where she was wet and aching for him, but Clarke stood her ground. “It’s disgusting.”

“Fine, I won’t you fuck you on the pool table,” he said as he dragged his teeth across her skin. And he kept his word because five minutes later he was locking the bar shut after haphazardly making sure everything was secured-- what he was supposed to be doing before she distracted him-- and then five minutes after that they were in his car, Clarke riding him in the back seat.)

It’s still one of her  _ fonder  _ memories of Bellamy.

She can feel the flush building on her face as she recalls the details of that night and she heads over to the bar to grab a bottle of water in hopes of getting herself to calm down.

Clarke really needs to stop doing that. They can barely stand each other in real life anymore and yet she’s still here lusting away to five year old memories. She needs to quit it. She needs to stop thinking about Bellamy on the whole.

That’s easier said than done of course.

Especially tonight where somehow they keep ending up next to each other, as though there was some kind of fucked up gravity in the works. She  _ hates _ it.

They get paired together to play beer pong.

Now, Clarke finds herself being rather good at beer pong since that probably could have been her minor back in college, and she knows that Bellamy isn’t so bad himself. At least, he’s not bad when he hasn’t been drinking.

“Come  _ on _ ,” she yells at him when he missed yet another shot, ball bouncing off the rim of the cup. Clarke is fiercely competitive and she refuses to let the likes of Bellamy Blake make her lose something.

They’re playing against Sterling, one of Monty’s friends from college, and Roan, who walked in over an hour late wearing a sheer dress shirt and a cowboy hat for some reason. Clarke’s learnt that it’s best not to question Roan’s lifestyle choices.

“What, you think you could do any better?” he snaps after he’s done chugging the cup of beer. Roan landed his and the ball was back in Clarke’s court.

She meets Bellamy’s gaze for a moment, her stare hard and determined and just a little bit cocky, and then with a flick of her wrist, she sends the ball soaring in a perfect arc, landing with a ‘plop!’ in the cup. Roan and Sterling’s supporters make a noise of disappointment as they’re forced to chug another cup of beer.

She turns back and smirks at him. “Oh, I know I can do better than you, Blake.”

Bellamy’s lips quirk up to one side as he appraises her.“I almost forgot,” he says, “Clarke Griffin, frat boy in disguise.”

She makes a face while Sterling lines up his shot. It sinks into their cup and there’s a cheer from the other side. “Shut up.”

It might be her drunken imagination but she could have sworn that Bellamy leaned in closer to her for a second. “Make me.”

She leans in too, but just so she could reach around him and grab the red solo cup, chugging the beer all while maintaining eye contact with him. Clarke passes the plastic ball over to him, trying not to shiver when her fingertips graze against his.

“Take the shot, Bellamy.”

He keeps eye contact with her a moment longer before he does just that, and this time the ball lands in the cup, leaving both sides with only two left.

“You were saying, Princess?”

She doesn’t deign to dignify that with a response instead watching as Roan shoots and misses, bringing it back to her turn again. Clarke easily gets it in and the other team is left with only one cup. She fist pumps in the air and Bellamy gives her a celebratory pat on the back.

Their celebrations don’t last too long because Sterling gets his in and that leaves them at one all with the ball in Bellamy’s hand.

“If you miss this I’m gonna murder you.”

“I’ve got it, Princess, relax.”

“I’m just saying, my pride is riding on this.”

“Griffin, shut up, a man is trying to focus.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry your worship, I forgot that when a man is concentrating he needs absolute silence.”

“Clarke, seriously.”

“ _ Fine _ .”

Bellamy focuses on the one cup in front of him and then, with a quick flick of his wrist, he sends the ball soaring directly into the cup.

There are resounding cheers from all around them, even from Clarke as Bellamy turns to face her, a hard blazing look on his face. They share an awkward celebratory side hug that lasts for no more than a second before he pulls away, leaving an arm’s length of space between them.

“Not bad, old man,” she says, trying to quell the sudden heat that rose to her cheeks.

They play two more rounds, one against Harper and Monroe, and the other against Jasper and Monty. The first one against Harper and Monroe is a walk in the park and they manage to claim victory before half of their cups are gone. The one against Jasper and Monty on the other hand is a bit more difficult since at this point, both Clarke  _ and  _ Bellamy are more than a little tipsy from chugging several cups of beer in addition to the previous shots. Still, they put up a good fight, even if it’s not enough to win, and then they bow out gracefully, stumbling towards their table and propping up one another.

“Now there’s something I thought I’d never see,” says Raven, arching one perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she watches them throw themselves down into the booth. Clarke is giggling, her entire left side pressed flush against the length of Bellamy’s body and he has an arm resting behind her on the chair.

Murphy has less tact of course. “You two are so fucking wasted if you’re acting like this without biting each other’s heads off.”

Bellamy aims a kick at him under the table. “Fuck off Murphy.”

“Yeah,” says Clarke, also trying to kick but missing and hitting Roan instead judging from his wince. “Fuck off Murphy.”

He just rolls his eyes. “You know what, I preferred it when you two hated each other.”

“I still hate him,” she says, poking him in the bicep. At some point during the night Bellamy took off the hoodie, leaving him in a tight black t-shirt. Clarke can’t help herself. “He sucks.”

“Fuck you too, Princess.”

Murphy scoffs again. “Yeah I can’t stand this, I’m out,” he says as he slides out of the booth.

Raven doesn’t say anything more, just passes her a plate of mini pizzas and she spends more time warding off Bellamy’s wandering hands from stealing them than she does eating them.

“You two are  _ children _ ,” she sniffs after returning with a second plate of finger foods for them to share as well as two bottles of water.

Bellamy just flips her off.

Monty stumbles over with a plate of nachos and slumps down in the seat next to her, nuzzling her arm.

“This is the best birthday ever,” he slurs.

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” Clarke says, ruffling his hair, as she gives Bellamy a bottle of water to open for him. He cracks the seal and passes it back to her wordlessly and she tries to get Monty to drink.

Monroe chooses to flounce over at that moment dragging a very disgruntled Murphy with her. She has her camera in hand and the next thing Clarke knows is that all members of Firehouse 47 as well as Jasper and Josie are being squished into that one single booth. She ends up just off centre, between Monty and Bellamy, halfway on both of their laps. A hand settles automatically on the small of her back and she doesn’t have to turn around to see whose it is.

“These are  _ definitely _ going on the wall,” says Monroe after she’s finished taking like fifty. Clarke’s mouth is hurting from smiling for so long.

The next hour or so is spent a bit more relaxed, sitting in the booth and talking about god knows what with her coworkers. They still drink of course, but it’s a lot more measured now, more careful and although Clarke knows that she’s still more than a little bit tipsy, the world has stopped lurching on its axis all that much anymore.

Closer to midnight Jasper excitedly calls everyone over to the front of the bar to sing happy birthday and watch as Monty blows out the candles. It’s an ice cream cake and Clarke doesn’t think she’s had one of those since she was like twelve. It fits the theme of the party though, a collective mash up of backyard middle school birthday and fraternity house parties. She never really pegged Monty as that type but seeing him here with Jasper, excessive amounts of sugar and alcohol is right up their alley.

They all sing and scream loudly as he blows out the candles and then take turns smearing the outer layer of chocolate syrup and whipped cream on Monty. Or at least, that’s what it started off as. Soon it devolves into a free for all with Monty getting back at everyone by rubbing his face on them.

Clarke ends up wearing more of the ice cream than she eats but it’s fine. It’s there, in the bathroom, bent over the sink, hearing the infectious laughter from just beyond the door as she struggles to rinse the sweet, sticky stuff out of her hair that she realises how much she loves these people. It’s only been six months but she’s found herself caring far more about her coworkers here at Firehouse 47 than anywhere else she’s worked. They’ve become her family, just like Raven said they would.

The newfound warmth in her chest is almost enough to make up for the absolutely  _ disgusting _ hangover she has to face the next day. Almost, but not quite and Clarke spends the entire day in bed with the drapes drawn closed, cursing Jasper and his moonshine to the high heavens.

* * *

It figures that their good luck was going to run out eventually.

After weeks of good calls-- or at least, as good as calls about car accidents and kitchen fires could get-- they get a bad one.

A  _ really  _ bad one.

It's just a bit over a week from the party and they’re all stuck in the station until the next morning. Monty is sat on the armchair with Harper perched on the arm of it, heads bent together over a tablet. Clarke is on the couch with Raven and Bellamy, the television playing on low in the background and the rest of them are in the kitchen, sat around the table playing a card game. She can hear Gabriel’s laughter from here.

The alarm goes off while Clarke is aimlessly scrolling through Instagram and within seconds, everyone is up and heading to the garage to pull on gear.

“MVA, corner of Freebird and Piccadilly. Number of casualties unknown,” comes a voice through the harsh crackle of the radio. 

Monty and Clarke are in the ambo, pulling off immediately, the firetruck right behind them, the two of them a cacophony of wailing sirens and flashing lights.

The first thing she notices when they get to the crash site is the mangled state of both cars involved. One of them was wedged head first against a tree and the other had rolled several metres away down a shallow ditch. Police were already on the scene cordoning off the area and redirecting traffic.

They bring the ambulance to a slow halt on the side of the road and when Clarke hops out she can hear the crunch of glass beneath her boots.

The scent of gasoline hits her as she steps out and it’s underlined by the bitter metallic stench of blood.

“Monty, radio in for back up, we’re gonna need it,” she says to him over her shoulder. She gets an affirmative but she’s too busy watching Bellamy to acknowledge it.

It’s the firefighters’ job in cases like these to make sure it’s safe for them to approach, and Clarke knows that the smell of gasoline in the air means that a fuel line was torn, which means that Bellamy is going to have his squad extra cautious as they survey the scene. The last thing they need right now is an explosion.

Once he gives the all clear, she and Monty move in, heading over to the car by the tree. The squad is still assessing the one in the ditch, trying to figure out how best to approach it. The car had clearly rolled several times before coming to a stop, flipped upside down, in the ditch.

The man inside is probably mid to late twenties, dressed in business wear that was now bloodstained. He has numerous lacerations across his face and hasn’t lost consciousness as yet, but he also isn’t particularly lucid either. When Clarke leans in to secure the C-collar she can smell the alcohol on him, even through the thick haze of the gasoline and her stomach roils.

“Careful,” she says to Monty as they maneuver him onto the backboard. “Patient definitely has signs of a concussion, multiple broken ribs, fractured hip. Possible internal bleeding.”

He just nods as he buckles him into place.

“Can’t do much for him here other than stabilize. Get him in the back and--”

“Griffin!” a deep voice cuts through the night, interrupting whatever she was going to say next. Bellamy. “We need you down here, now!”

She looks over at Monty who jerks his chin towards her. “I got this. You go.”

She barely has time to flash him a quick smile before grabbing her kit and rushing off towards them. It had rained earlier, meaning the grass that sloped down into the shallow ditch was slick and she almost slipped twice.

The second time was near the bottom and Bellamy reached out a hand to steady her.

“Three victims, two adults, one child,” he briefs her, “The kid-- Clarke, she doesn’t look too good.”

It’s not just the tone his voice takes or the way he looks pale and worried under his freckles, but the way he says her name that’s got her really worried. Not Griffin, or Princess, but  _ Clarke _ .

She swallows, trying to steel herself. “Can you get her out?”

Bellamy nods. “Roan and Gabriel are working on it right now. Car’s pretty banged up so we’ve got to go through with the saw.”

Just then there’s the loud, terrible screech of metal that comes as it’s being pried apart and they both jog towards it. Inside is a little girl, maybe seven or eight at the very most, unconscious and covered in blood. Beyond her, in the front seats, are who she presumes to be her parents.

She turns to Bellamy who’s kneeling on the ground next to her. “I can’t reach her.”

“I got her,” he says immediately. He turns to his side to yell, “Murphy! Reyes! Get those other two out of there. I don’t care if you have to smash the fuckin’ windscreen to do it.”

“Not much left to smash,” says Murphy, wielding a crowbar.

Bellamy’s responding glare would have made lesser men cower. “ _ Now _ , Murphy.”

He reaches inside, using his utility knife to cut away at the seatbelt holding her in place in order to get her out.

“Careful her neck,” says Clarke, hovering just above his shoulder and watching his every move. He gets her out and places her on the grass next to them, and Clarke is on her immediately, checking her ABCs and pupillary reflex, coming up negative in both.

“Tell Monty to come down and assist with the others,” she says, trying to keep her voice even as she rips open the girl’s t-shirt. “He radioed in for more back up, they should be here shortly.”

With no pulse felt or signs of breathing seen and a clear airway, Clarke begins CPR.

“Hand me the Ambu bag,” she tells him as she nears the thirtieth compression. Bellamy does just that without comment, watching as she administers two rescue breaths before returning to her compressions. He doesn’t say anything, just watches her with dark eyes as an increasing sense of foreboding settles over them.

She reassesses after she finishes the fifth cycle, still finding no pulse or rise and fall of her chest and grabs the AED from her field kit.

“Clarke, if you--”

“If you’re going to try and tell me how to do my job, Bellamy, now really isn’t the time,” she snaps, slipping up and letting her panic colour her voice.

“I was just going to say, let me help,” he says, trying to keep his voice measured.

She blinks, faltering for just a second as she places the much too big electrodes on a much too small chest. “You’re not a paramedic, I can’t let you do that,” she says as she clears the patient and administers a shock.

Nothing happens.

She tries it again and there’s still no response.

“Clarke--”

“There’s a vial of epinephrine in my kit,” she says, swallowing thickly, “Give it to me and a syringe.”

It’s a last ditch attempt but at this point Clarke is willing to try anything. She preps the syringe and administers the dose in a vein before trying to pump her heart again.

She tries, but eventually her efforts prove to be futile and eventually Clarke has to stop, letting out a ragged sigh.

“Why are you stopping?” asks Bellamy, looking back and forth between her bowed head and the hands on a too still chest.

Clarke sniffs, trying to push past the burning in her eyes. “I’m calling it.”

“What? No you, can’t. There has to be something else--”

“There isn’t anything else,” she says, gathering her equipment robotically and repacking her field kit. “I’m calling it. Time of death 9:47pm.”

She doesn’t hear what else Bellamy says as she instructs someone to get the body. She moves in a daze as she attends to the other victims, the poor girl’s parents, who were both unconscious and in critical condition, but still very much alive. She sends them off in the other ambulance before getting in with Monty to head to the hospital, getting in the front seat instead of the back to avoid having to look at the body.

Clarke doesn’t remember the ride to the hospital or giving her statement and signing off on the reports, or even the ride back to the house. Everything is just one big blur to her. 

It’s just past midnight when they pull up in the garage and she snaps out of her stupor just long enough to grab her things and walk out of there without even a word to Monty. She heads straight to the showers, fumbling to get out of uniform as her vision finally blurs because of the tears she’s been holding back for the past few hours.

She lets herself stand under the spray of the shower, tears flowing silently down her face as she hears the others arrive back at the house. Even though they all must know that she’s the one in the stall at the very end, no one says anything to her. There’s nothing to say. A certain kind of somber heaviness hangs in the air, weighing down on her shoulders.

It’s not the first time she’s lost someone.

It’s not the second or third or maybe even hundredth. As a paramedic, she’s exposed to more death than she’d ever be totally comfortable with. Accidents happen. They respond to them. Not everyone can be saved, no matter how much she wishes that was different.

She’s lost children before too, children of all ages due to a variety of different things. It wasn’t common, but, unfortunately, it also wasn’t rare. However this one had been her first child lost since she moved back to Arkadia and it hit her like a gut punch.

Clarke remains under the spray of the shower long after it turns cold, waiting for everyone to leave. By the time she gets out her toes have gone numb and she’s actively shivering as she tries to get dressed.

The dorms are empty when she gets back to them, which is expected. At this point it’s almost 1a.m., their shift finished hours ago. She crosses the room with a single minded purpose, stopping at Raven’s desk where she pulls out the bottom drawer and grabs the bottle of whiskey.

Alcohol isn’t allowed on the compound, especially if they’re on duty, but Clarke’s had a long day and she’s not on duty anymore and most importantly, she needs a fucking drink.

There’s an empty coffee cup by Harper’s station, clean, and she pours herself several fingers worth of whiskey before taking a big gulp.

One drink turns to two and then two turns to three and that’s when Bellamy catches her, opening the door to the girls’ dormitory and remaining still in the doorway.

“Clarke? You’re still here?”

He’s showered and changed too, dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a faded AFD t-shirt. His hair is still wet, curling at the ends and soaking his collar where it’s grown too long.

“Oh fuck off Bellamy, I’m not in the mood,” she says bitterly, turning away from him.

He’s not so easily dissuaded. He steps into the room and lets the door fall shut behind him, leaving them both in almost complete darkness. The only light in the room comes from the street lamps outside, filtering through the old slotted louvers and lace curtain.

He doesn’t say anything as he walks towards her, his footfalls deceptively light for someone of his stature, and he sits next to her on the cot.

“You’re drinking. That’s a rule violation right there.”

She snorts. “You gonna write me up?”

“Last I remember you said you don’t report to me.”

She snorts again and he pries the bottle from her grasp, studying the label. “This from Raven’s stash?” he asks and she nods he takes a whiff of it. “Trust her to buy the most disgusting whiskey out there.”

“S’okay,” she shrugs, taking another sip from the mug. “You get used to it after a while.”

They both sit in silence for a moment, the only sounds to be heard is the faint buzzing of electricity that powered the lamps outside and the slosh of liquid every time she moved her mug.

Bellamy is the first to break it, saying, “Her name was Charlotte. She was eight.”

The whiskey has become unbelievably sour as she swallows. “I know. I had to put that into my report.”

“Her parents were coming back from seeing a movie with her. They did that often, family movie nights,” he says easily.

Her knuckles have gone bone white from the force at which she is holding on to the mug. “Why are you telling me all of this? She’s dead. I couldn’t save her. They’ll never be able to do family movie nights like that again.”

“I’m just relaying the facts to you,” Bellamy says smoothly and Clarke scoffs. 

“Uh huh, sure.”

“The other guy is projected to make a full recovery. When he gets out of there he’s expected to be charged with driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter,” he tells her.

“It’s always the assholes who cause the problems getting out with the least amount of injuries,” she mutters bitterly.

“Not always,” he says and she’s suddenly reminded of Raven who went through something just like this about a decade ago. Clarke feels like an absolutely terrible friend for not thinking to check on her. Having to deal with something like that tonight must have been triggering for her.

“Shit. How is she?”

He shrugs. “You know Raven. She doesn’t let anyone really know how she’s coping. I let her go early because of it. Murphy was doing her part of the report.”

Clarke doesn’t know what else to say and they lapse into a heavy, stilted silence.

“You shouldn’t beat yourself up for this,” Bellamy says, incredibly soft and she glances at him out of the corner of her eye.

“I couldn’t save her. My job is to help people and I couldn’t even fucking do that today,” she says bitterly, taking another sip of the whiskey. She’s just there, teetering on the edge of drunk, close but not quite as yet.

“You helped save the other three,” he says, “You did do your job.”

“Yeah and now that asshole gets to live while Charlotte is dead,” she mutters before draining the contents of her cup. She tries to take the bottle from him to pour herself another one but he pulls it out of her reach.

“It’s not your job to decide who gets to live and die,” he tells her. “We save who we can save today.”

The way he says it-- the way he’s been saying everything since he slipped into the room-- in that unnaturally calm, measured voice is grating on her nerves. And Clarke, with her nerves already raw and exposed from the events of that day, finally cracks.

“What the fuck do you want, Bellamy?” she snaps at him, putting the mug down with such force that she almost breaks the handle.

“I came to check up on you.”

“I don’t need your fucking pity. I’m fine.”

She can just barely make out the way his jaw works at that, her statement hitting something deep inside him.

“Yeah, because fine people sit in the dark drinking whiskey from a coffee cup at one in the morning,” he says and yeah, okay, that one stings a little.

“Don’t you have anything better to do.”

“I’m just checking in on you, Clarke.”

“Well I don’t need you to!” she bursts. “Leave me the fuck alone, Bellamy. I don’t need you to check in on me or give one of your fucking motivational speeches or tell me that everything is going to be fine when it clearly is  _ not _ . I don’t need  _ you _ .”

He’s stunned into silence by her outburst and honestly, Clarke is too. It doesn’t help that as soon as she’s finished, face flushed and chest heaving, there comes the telltale building of pressure behind her eyes and before she knows it, the tears are welling up and flowing over, like a dam that’s lost its battle.

This has to be the low point of her entire life she thinks. Having a complete breakdown in front of her ex boyfriend, now coworker, at one in the morning when she’s half drunk. She’s at rock bottom and she brought a shovel to keep on going.

It’s made even worse when Bellamy just  _ stands there _ , not knowing how to react to her sudden breakdown and Clarke cries even more.

Of course, as much as it pains her to admit, Bellamy isn’t a total ass. He may have stood there at first not knowing what to do, but only after a moment of awkwardness he jumps into action, pulling her into his arms and letting her cry against his chest.

His arms are too stiff and his body is too tense but it’s still comforting, the way his fingers automatically tangle in the ends of her hair, whispering platitudes to try and calm her down.

“It’s okay, Princess,” he murmurs, carding his fingers through her hair. “It’s okay.”

The two of them just stand there in the darkened room, clinging to each other, and if Clarke was of solid mind at the moment she would realise that, from the way he sniffed ever so often, this was as much for him as it was for her. But she’s not, too consumed by her grief to notice, so she just lets herself be held in the moment, ignoring all of their previous grievances.

She’s not sure how much time has elapsed between when he pulls her to him to when they part, but she’s stopped crying and Bellamy’s eyes aren’t quite as shadowed as they were at the start of all of this.

“Come on,” he says, voice gruff, “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” she asks, scrambling to follow after him. She’s feeling the effects of the whiskey now, stumbling into the side of the bed and he purses his lips.

“You think I’m letting you stay the night in an empty dorm?”

She can’t help but say, “I didn’t think you cared.”

“I don’t,” he retorts briskly. “I just don’t want to have to answer to Pike about why one of his paramedics is drunk off her ass here on her day off.”

It’s a valid reason but the stress of the day combined with all the alcohol makes her tongue loose and bitter. “Sounds like caring to me,” she taunts. “Thought the big bad Bellamy Blake doesn’t give a fuck about poor little old me anymore.”

He stops at the door and turns, looking at her. Really looking at her, his gaze almost penetrating her to her very bones.

“I’ve always given a fuck about you, Clarke,” he says quietly, sounding disgusted with himself. “Even when you were trying your best to get under my skin. I could never quite be completely apathetic about you.”

Silence.

She doesn’t know what to say to that and clearly neither does he.

After a beat Bellamy clears his throat and says, “You may be a pain in my ass but you’re a damn good paramedic, Griffin. I’d hate to see you lose your job because of this.”

It’s the most praise he’s ever eked out for her since she’s been here at the House and it honestly looks as though it pains him to say it.

Still, Clarke finds it within herself to mutter a quiet, “Thank you,” and he nods at her in response.

When he pulls open the door to leave, she goes with him.

He doesn’t take her hand, but he stands close enough to her that she can feel the heat radiating off of him, smell the fresh scent of his body wash that sends a pang of yearning through her. Clarke doesn’t drive-- doesn’t have a car nor does she really need one. She lives in the city where there’s always buses and trains, and Ubers and Lyfts since this is the twenty-first century.

Bellamy on the other hand does have a car, a jeep, that’s an upgrade from the old pickup he used to drive while they were dating.

The night air is chilly as they walk across the parking lot to where it’s parked, and she shivers, cursing herself for neglecting to grab her coat from her backpack before she shoved everything else on top of it. She’s just wearing a pair of thin leggings and a Henley that does nothing to ward off the chill.

He notices of course. Bellamy always notices everything even if he doesn’t say. When they slip into the jeep, he turns around and grabs an old hoodie from the backseat and tosses it towards her.

“Put that on,” he says, brusque, and she bites her tongue to keep from responding.

He’s being nice to her, even while being rather rude about it all, an oxymoron in the making.

She doesn’t tell him thank you as she pulls it on though. She can bite her tongue all she wants to keep from talking but it does nothing to curb the pettiness inside her.

Bellamy doesn’t ask her where she lives. She doesn’t offer an address either.

After about twenty minutes of driving in complete silence-- no radio, no words, just the hum of the engine and the occasional click of his blinker-- they pull up at an apartment complex. His obviously. It’s much nicer than where he used to live when he was struggling through two jobs and online classes while trying to support his sister.

“You didn’t say where to go,” he says as he cuts the ignition. “And I really wasn’t in the mood to drive in circles.”

“You could have asked,” Clarke can’t help but snipe and he rolls his eyes.

“Thought you went around saying whatever you wanted without being asked.”

“It’s called being  _ assertive _ .”

“It’s called being an  _ ass _ .”

Clarke finds herself biting back a weary smile at the exchange and Bellamy pretends not to notice.

“This okay?” he asks, looking at her with dark eyes and she swallows. There’s no doubt in her mind that if she said no, he’d start the car right back up again and take her to her place even though it was on the other side of town. Something stops her from saying that though and she just nods in response. She doesn’t want to be alone right now and she’d wager that he felt the same way.

Bellamy lives on the fourth floor of a newly renovated building. He has a corner apartment that used to be two bedrooms but he turned the second one into an office is what he tells her when they’re on the lift up. The apartment itself is clean and tidy although she didn’t expect anything less. He’s always been a neat freak. There’s a small bureau in the entryway that he rests his keys and wallet on and his shoes come off and go immediately in the closet. A half dead houseplant sits in his living room and a small herb garden is on the kitchen windowsill along with some unopened letters on the small round dining table.

If it was anyone else she would treat them to a generic compliment but it’s just Bellamy and she couldn’t be bothered. She’s  _ tired. _

“Make yourself at home,” he says before slipping into what she assumes is his bedroom.

She sits on the couch, back ramrod straight and legs crossed, feeling all the more out of place. His walls are mostly bare other than a clock hanging in the kitchen and a small framed picture of the squad from last Christmas. There’s a bookshelf filled with books on the wall nearest to his bedroom.

He comes back a moment later holding a bundle of clothes.

“If you want to change, the bathroom is through there,” he says, pointing to the middle door.

“Thanks.”

“You hungry?” he asks, scrutinising her face, “I usually just eat leftovers but I could order something if you want.”

“Oh, um, no, I’m okay,” she says. “I could use some water though?”

He nods and shuffles off into the kitchen leaving Clarke with the bundle of clothes.

The leggings and Henley that she’s wearing is comfortable enough to sleep in, but she still slips into the bathroom to change nonetheless. The t-shirt he gave her used to be one of her favourites, dark blue and impossible soft, and Clarke wonders if that was intentional or if it was merely coincidence. She switches her top for that but leaves the pants because there was something intimate about wearing his clothes. The t-shirt alone she could handle. Not both.

She leaves her bra on too, for obvious reasons.

Bellamy is in the kitchen heating something up in the oven when she comes back out after scrubbing her face and throwing her hair up into a messy bun. There’s a glass of water on the counter for her, room temp, no ice, just how she takes it.

“I had some leftover lasagne,” he says as he pulls out two plates from the cabinet over by the sink. “Hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

He turned the TV on while she was changing and it was playing a rerun of an episode of  _ Friends _ . She doesn’t particularly care for it but it’s nice to have something to fill the silence while they eat.

Clarke offers to wash the dishes after and he dries them and she tries not to think about all the other times they’ve done this before.

“The couch pulls out,” he tells her as she goes to brush her teeth. He asks her to bring a sheet set from the linen closet in the bathroom.

“Oh, I can fix it for myself, you don’t have to--”

“It’s for me, Princess, not you,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “You’re getting the bed tonight.”

“Bellamy, you don’t have to--”

“It’s late and I’m not arguing this with you,” he says definitively as he grabs the sheet set she brought out and starts adjusting a _fitted_ _sheet_ on the couch. Absolutely ridiculous.

Clarke bites her lip, clearly wanting to argue but he’s right. It’s past two already and she’s exhausted. So she lets him have this one and just nods. “Okay. Thank you.”

“It’s no problem.”

If it was before, they wouldn’t need to argue about this in the first place. They’d both take the bed, climbing in together and cuddling beneath the duvet. Bellamy liked to sleep shirtless so she would rest her head on his chest and let the sound of his heartbeat lull her to sleep.

Now she just stands there awkwardly, biting her lip, before managing to squeak out a tiny ‘Goodnight’ and disappearing into his room.

Clarke tries not to snoop much, but she can’t help but give the room a cursory look around. Like the rest of the apartment it’s clean, bed properly made up and wardrobe drawn fully shut. There’s a TV mounted on the wall opposite the bed and a large set of windows on another that take up almost the entire length of the wall. Like the rest of the place, there are no pictures or anything except for a small family photo taken when he was twelve. It’s the same photo he had back in his old place on his bedside table.

She doesn’t do anymore snooping, feeling impossibly tired after the day she’s had, so she climbs into bed and pulls the duvet over her head. Immediately she’s surrounded by the scent of fresh laundry and  _ Bellamy _ , a scent combination that makes her heart clench as it forces her to remember the good times.

It’s those memories-- falling asleep together and waking up curled around each other, movie nights in bed when he felt particularly upset about something, him taking care of her when she got a nasty bout of the flu-- that follows her when she finally drifts to sleep.

And then, even in sleep, Bellamy is still on her mind.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: death. the team answer a call to a motor vehicle accident caused by drunk driving. clarke tries to save a child involved but ultimately fails.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As much as she tries to deny it, Clarke Griffin still cares about Bellamy Blake. Perhaps even cares too much for him given the current state of affairs between them.
> 
> Now is not quite the time to be having revelations and epiphanies, and yet, she can’t help but stutter to a halt amidst all the chaos that surrounds her, her heart slowing then stopping then picking back up double-time as the realisation hits her full force. 
> 
> It’s both thrilling and terrifying, caring for somebody again.
> 
> (A small part of her wonders if she ever really stopped caring after all. Clarke promptly grinds that part of her into the dirt and jogs back to the ambulance to get more supplies.)

_ 5 years ago _

She remembers the strangest details about that day. It was summertime, four in the afternoon and she was in Bellamy’s apartment. The entire place smelled like citrus because his sister had made a pitcher of lemonade earlier that morning. He was cooking them an early dinner and Clarke was sitting on top of the counter wearing an old blue t-shirt of his. The hem was frayed and there were several holes in the neckline, including one in the right armpit. Whenever she wore it he would stick a finger through and tickle her.

Bellamy and Clarke break up on a Wednesday.

It’s not something she planned-- or him for that matter-- but sometimes things happen and, well.

She can’t stop fidgeting as she tells him the news, rambling on and on, unable to meet his eye through any of it.

“I know that California is far,” she says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, “But I’ll be back home every Christmas. And you can come visit me whenever you’re free. And we can Skype too.”

The silence that follows at the end of her little speech is deafening.

“So you’re actually doing it then,” he finally says, voice flat, “Going to med school.” He does not sound impressed and Clarke’s confidence falters a little bit.

She nods. “My mom wants me to leave within the month so I can find a place and get settled.”

“Within the  _ month _ ?” he repeats, blinking a little, and she shrinks down in her seat a bit. She got the acceptance letter a few months ago and Clarke’s been sitting on it, dawdling until the last possible minute. “Jesus Clarke, were you ever going to tell me if I hadn’t brought it up?”

“I was trying to figure out the right time because I knew you’d act like this!”

They’ve fought about it before, med school, short arguments and bickering mostly. Bellamy thought that she shouldn’t waste all this time and effort to do something that she didn’t wholly love. And while Clarke privately agreed, she also knew that her mother wouldn’t settle for anything less, going so far as to threaten her inheritance. 

Still, their fights have never been like this, never had this undercurrent of tension, like a string drawn taut that was threatening to snap at any minute now. Of course, she’d never hidden her acceptance letter from him either. That string was already fraying and it would take very little to rip it in two.

“The right time,” he snorts, shaking his head as though he can’t believe what she’s saying. “The right time for you would be when you’re already on the plane. Just a little ‘oh hey, forgot to mention but I’m moving across the country for med school!’”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“You avoid confrontation at all costs, Clarke, even at the expense of other people’s feelings.”

She can’t deny that it stings a bit and she finds herself looking up at his scowling face and sighing. “Look, I didn’t come here to fight with you okay? I just wanted to tell you and I thought you’d understand.”

“I understand plenty,” he says, a muscle working in his jaw as he meets her gaze. “Have fun in California.”

“Stanford is a good school. It’s where my mom went.”

“So she picked out your degree, your school, probably gonna pick out your apartment too when you get to California,” he says acerbically, ticking each one off on his fingers as he speaks and she flinches a bit at his tone. “What’s next, huh Clarke? She’s gonna pick out your specialty for you? Your future house? Dictate the number of kids you’re gonna have?”

Clarke huffs. “My mother doesn’t exert that much influence on my life.” And then, after a short pause in which he regards her with a cocked eyebrow, she grudgingly adds on, “She wants me to go into trauma surgery. Like her.”

Bellamy throws his hands up in the air. “See what I mean?”

“It doesn’t  _ mean _ anything.”

“You don’t even want to go to med school,” he says. “You said so yourself.”

She lifts her chin as she looks at him, ever so stubborn. “Well, maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

“People change their minds about what movie they wanna watch, not about moving across the country to go to med school,” he snaps.

“Don’t act like all of this is a fucking shock to you,” she retorts, feeling that familiar stirring of anger deep in her belly. “You knew that I would be going to med school. You’ve known that for as long as we’ve known each other.”

He flicks the stove off and turns to face her, the same fire that was burning inside her evident in his eyes as he regards her with a scowl. “What I  _ know _ was that you’ve complained about signing up for med school for as long as we’ve known each other. What happened to art?”

“Art is just a hobby, Bellamy!” she snarls at him, sliding off the counter so she could face him at full height. He still has about a half a foot on her, but it’s the principle of the thing that matters. “I can’t make a career out of  _ art _ .”

In the back of her mind Clarke knows that this is almost the exact same argument she had with her mother when it was time to submit her applications, just with the roles reversed. Abby always told her that art was a hobby, ever since she was young. It was something that looked good on college applications and when that time came and went she fully expected her to stop. When she didn’t, her mom started making those pointed little comments about it. It doesn’t slip past her that she’s doing the exact same thing right now, but Clarke is too incensed to care.

“So you rather go into a career that you hate for a sake of appeasing your mother?” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Guess all those times you went on about carving out your own path was just talk huh.”

“No I just grew up and realised that I wanted a stable future,” she hisses at him, feeling betrayed that he would so cavalierly toss her words back in her face like that.

“No, you just realised that you couldn’t get anywhere without your mother’s money. You’re a coward,” he tells her and--  _ ouch _ .

It’s the way he says it, says all of it, the easy way he’s able to find the seam of her insecurities and rip it wide open, leaving her raw and exposed. Despite the fact that they’ve only known each other for less than a year, Clarke is always thrown by just how well they know each other. How well he knows her doubts and fears, how he’s able to soothe them with just a few words, and now, how he’s able to wield them like a weapon.

She could have loved him-- hell, maybe she already does-- but not even love could help smother the fire raging inside her, the anger and the hurt forces her to say, “Well at least I’m doing something with my life _ unlike you. _ ”

Bellamy stumbles back as though she’s slapped him.

Clarke is well aware that she’s crossed a line, but she can’t find it in her to stop there, not when she’s fuelled by anger. It’s like a match has been struck in the powder keg of her emotions and the words pour out of her mouth without control.

“You’re twenty four with just a high school diploma and a shitty bartending job. You always talk about wanting to go back to college or take night classes but then say you can’t because you have to take care of your sister even though she’s said multiple times that she doesn’t want to go to college. Admit it, you’ve grown accustomed to where you are and you don’t want to rock the boat.”

Her chest is heaving by the time she’s finished and she’s certain that her skin is red and splotchy.

Bellamy lifts a single, sardonic eyebrow as he regards her, the initial shock on his face transforming into something cruel and hard. “Oh yeah, Clarke? Tell me how you  _ really _ feel.”

“I think you’re scared.”

“Really.”

“You rather sit here and do nothing with your life while using your sister as a shield.”

“Hate to break it to you, princess,” he snarls, and she flinches at the way he sinks his teeth in and mangles the once sweet pet name. “But some of us don’t have mommy to pay for every whim and fancy we desire. You think I like struggling to keep up with my online classes? That I don’t want to get a proper degree?”

“Your actions state otherwise,” she says in that prim and proper haughty voice of hers that probably warrants the use of  _ princess _ . “I think if you wanted to make your online courses work, you would have. But instead you rather throw yourself a pity party.”

He laughs, but it’s without humour, loud and grating in the small room. “That’s fucking rich coming from you,” he says, “You know all about pity parties, don’t you Clarke? All those times you complained about your mom and how she’s forcing you to do things her way just to turn around and accept without even batting an eyelash. Oh boo hoo, your life is so hard.”

She swallows hard and turns away from him, hoping that by cutting off eye contact it would help lessen the pressure building behind her eyeballs.

“Med school was always in the cards and I’m sorry if you ever felt led astray by anything that I’ve said,” she says after a moment, voice emotionless as she focuses on a spot just past his shoulder.

Bellamy doesn’t look particularly convinced by her reply. In fact, he looks more incensed than before. “That’s bullshit and you and I both know that.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“ _ Clarke _ .”

She blinks up at him, eyes focusing just in time to see the mask slip just a little and expose the desperation and hurt and anger that swirled across his face. Too soon, he catches a hold of himself and lets the indignant fury take its place once more.

“So if that was always in the card then what was all of this then?” he asks, his voice deceptively calm as he observes her.

Her brows furrow. “What was what?”

“This. This whole relationship thing. I’m assuming that wasn’t in the cards, was it?” he says, that cruel edge in his voice cutting into her, “I bet dating someone like  _ me  _ was your last bit of rebellion before you went off to do exactly what your mother wanted.”

“That’s not--”

“Save your excuses, princess,” he says, spitting the nickname at her. 

“I wanted to date you,” she snaps at him. “It had nothing to do with my mother. Although, now I’m wondering why I even  _ liked _ you in the first place.”

He lifts his brows, faking astonishment. “You  _ liked _ me? Wow, could have fooled me considering you had a list of all my  _ flaws _ on hand, ready and waiting.”

“As if you weren’t doing anything different,” she shoots back at him, vitriol seeping from every word.

“Oh but I was.” His lips tug up into a humourless grin and it sends a chill through her. “I didn’t date you just to stick it to my rich mommy. I actually liked you but I guess that was due to a significant lack of foresight on my part.”

“God, you’re a real dick, you know that?”

“You remind me twice a day.”

She rubs a tired hand down her face. “You know what, forget it. I told you because it was the right thing to do. Because I thought my  _ boyfriend _ would be happy about me going to med school.”

“Who says I’m still your boyfriend?” he challenges, looking at her straight in the face and  _ oh _ .

Clarke’s entire body goes tense for a single mind numbing moment, and all she can do is stare at him, catalogue that vindictive look on his face, the angry flush that swirls beneath his cheeks, the way his chest rises and falls ever so quickly as he tries to hide his ire. She feels as though the world just stopped on its axis, grinding to a halt, and when it starts back she has to remind herself that she’s standing here, barefoot on the cold linoleum floor of Bellamy’s kitchen and he’s glaring at her.

She takes a deep breath.

“So that’s it then?” she asks coolly, looking up at him. It’s such a surprise that she manages to keep her voice steady as she says it.

Bellamy crosses his arms as he regards her. “I guess so.”

She turns away from him, doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing the soundless little gasp that escapes her as the force of what happened truly starts to set in.

“Have fun at Stanford,” he tells her flatly, returning to the stove. “Lock the door on your way out.”

Clarke bites the inside of her cheek hard enough that she tastes the bitter coppery taste of blood but she doesn’t say anything out of fear that it would tip her past her breaking point. She doesn’t say anything as she roughly wrenches open his bedroom door and grabs her tank top. She doesn’t say anything as she swaps shirts, forgoing her bra because it’s lost somewhere in his room and she refuses to root around for it. She doesn’t say anything as she slides on her shoes and walks out of the apartment, letting the door fall forward with a quiet snick that resonates far louder than any slam would.

She manages to hold off on the tears until she gets back to her own apartment, under the safety of darkness and her comforter, and when they finally come, she can’t seem to stop them.

* * *

Things are-- awkward between them when she wakes up the next morning.

Clarke comes to with a groan, a dull pounding in the back of her head and mouth that feels like it was stuffed with cotton before she went to sleep. It only takes a few moments-- moments where she’s blinking the sleep out of her eyes, breathing in the heady scent of him that clings to the sheets, recognising that the off white walls of this room wasn’t  _ hers _ \-- for her to remember where she is, and when that happens, Clarke rolls over and shoves her face into a pillow, groaning again.

So she got drunk at work, had a complete breakdown in front of her ex which ended in her crying all over him, then went home with said ex where she kicked him out of his own room and appropriated his bed for herself. Great.

She wishes she could just curl up into a ball and  _ die _ .

Her phone, which miraculously is still alive albeit on 11%, tells her that it’s just after 9 a.m. and if she listens closely, she can hear Bellamy puttering around outside, most likely making breakfast.

As much as she rather stay here, under the duvet where she can pretend that last night didn’t happen, Clarke knows that she’ll have to get up sometime or else Bellamy is going to come looking for her once breakfast is finished. And, since she’d much rather cling to her last shred of self decency before he does that, she screws her eyes shut and rolls out of bed.

She ducks into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth with the spare toothbrush that he gave her last night. She also tries to wrangle her hair into some form of neatness, but the most she can get by just finger combing it through is a sloppy ponytail. Still, it’s much better than the veritable bird’s nest that she woke up with.

She washes her face a second time just to delay going out for a moment longer but Clarke knows that she has to face the music soon.

She places her hand on the doorknob and takes a deep breath. Just like ripping off a band aid, she tells herself.

The first first thing to hit her is the smell of melting butter followed by the mellow sweetness of the pancake batter. Bellamy shuffles around the small kitchen, humming aimlessly while a true crime podcast plays softly in the background. He’s still in his pyjamas-- soft flannel pants and a t-shirt that’s most likely for her benefit-- and he’s wearing his glasses, perched crookedly on his nose.

Clarke has to lean against the wall for a minute, the wave of nostalgia crashing into her so hard that it makes her knees buckle.

They’ve spent many mornings like this.

Bellamy waking up early to make her breakfast, Clarke dawdling and dragging her tired body out of bed. She’s always been a late sleeper and he used to try and get the whole thing finished before she got out of bed. He put himself in charge of breakfast because the one and only time he stayed over at her place, she had nothing but frozen Eggos and Poptarts to offer. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that is something that Bellamy Blake takes to heart.

“Morning,” Clarke says, a little timid, once she’s able to find her voice again.

Bellamy looks up from where he’s slicing some bananas. His face doesn’t go blank but it does close in a bit, some of that tension creeping back in and Clarke wants to sigh. She hates being responsible for that but she has no idea how to fix it.

“Good morning,” he says, ducking his head slightly in acknowledgement. “How are you feeling?”

She pulls a face. “Like I should probably buy Raven a better bottle of whiskey. Her cheap shit doesn’t taste good enough to warrant such a terrible headache.”

Bellamy bites the inside of his cheek to stop from smiling but she can see it in his face anyway, in the slight crinkle of his eyes.

“I made breakfast,” he says after a brief pause. He’s not looking at her as he says it, focusing intently on the cutting board in front of him so as to avoid her gaze.

She bites back the snarky response that immediately sprouts on her tongue. By all accounts, he could have very well just kicked her out as soon as she woke up, hell he didn’t even have to bring her to his apartment in the first place. Bellamy is under no obligations to be nice to her but he’s making an effort and Clarke figures she should too.

“Do you need any help with anything?” she asks, rocking on her feet.

He replies with a jerky shrug of his shoulder. “No it’s fine. I’m pretty much done here anyway.”

“Oh. Okay.” She watches as he flips the final pancake on to the top of the stack and smears a pad of butter onto it. Clarke feels tense and wooden as she folds herself into one of the chairs by his kitchen table, keeping her back ramrod straight as he passes her a plate and some cutlery.

They eat in complete silence, the only sound coming from his podcast. Clarke tries not to chew too loudly. Bellamy does his best not to look in her vicinity. She’s never seen someone concentrate that hard on a crossword.

She offers to clear up after they’re done eating and he hesitates just long enough that she gears up for an argument. She almost wants him to argue with her if she’s being honest. She knows how to handle angry Bellamy. This other version however, the one where they’re walking on fucking eggshells around each other, scared to even talk… well, she doesn’t know what to do with that one.

But he doesn’t argue with her, he instead gives her a curt nod and a muttered, “Okay,” and then leaves her to wash up while he disappears into the bathroom to shower.

There aren't that many dishes to clean up so she’s finished well before he is and Clarke decides to bite the bullet and order an Uber one time to prevent having to endure another awkward silence. Or even worse: conversation.

At this point her phone is on 8% and she thanks the gods that Bellamy left his charger out here in the living room.

She spends the next couple of minutes while waiting on her ride sitting hunched back in the armchair nearest to the outlet and firmly ignoring the sound of running water through the thin walls. It’s very easy for her to remember weekend mornings where he’d make her breakfast and then after she’d slip into the shower behind him.

Clarke shakes her head and opens up Instagram, furiously scrolling and double tapping without even looking at the pictures as she tries to get her mind off of her ex boyfriend in the shower.

When her Uber is just five minutes out, she sits up and unplugs her phone, grabbing her bag from the bedroom. She hesitates for a moment in front of the bathroom door before she knocks on it and says, “I ordered an Uber. It’s going to be here in a few minutes.”

The water turns off immediately.

Less than a minute later the door to the bathroom is being flung open and Bellamy marches out, a pair of sweatpants slung low on his hips, chest bare and hair still dripping wet. He has a towel slung around his neck and looks decidedly put out. At least she thinks he is. Clarke looked away the minute she saw him wet and shirtless, colour blooming on her cheeks.

“You did what?” he asks, absentmindedly dabbing the end of the towel against the water trailing down his skin.

“Called an Uber.” She’s suddenly very interested in the hairline crack running along the moulding of the wall.

“I could have given you a ride home,” he says, frowning a little and she bites the inside of her cheek.

She glances back at him, having taken a moment to compose herself, but he still looks like  _ that _ and god, Clarke knew she should have just dipped out and left a note, as impolite as it might have been. If she did that then she wouldn’t be faced with  _ him _ at this current moment.

“No, no. I don’t want to inconvenience you further.”

“You could never be an inconvenience to me, Clarke,” he says quietly. He says it in the same tone as he did last night when he said he could never be apathetic towards her. A little disgusted with himself, very tired, and the undercurrent of something else that she can’t--  _ won’t--  _ put a name to.

She swallows dryly.

“Still, you’ve done more than enough and I don’t want to be responsible for monopolizing your weekend.”

“I highly doubt taking an hour out of my Saturday is considered monopolizing,” he says wryly, and it gets a smile to her face.

Clarke clears her throat. “No I guess not.” She finally looks back up at him, ignoring the lack of shirt and the still dripping wet hair, and he flashes her a quick grin that makes her heart feel something  _ stupid _ .

Her phone pings, alerting her that the Uber driver is outside, a proper distraction. Clarke shoulders her backpack and gives him a shy smile. “Bellamy,” she starts, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I just want to say-- thank you. For last night. You didn’t have to do that.”

“You’re one of us, Clarke. Despite… everything, you’re still part of the house. We look after our own,” he says, a little gruff. If she were to squint, she’d see the slight colour creeping up the sides of his neck.

“Still. Thank you.”

He gives her a curt nod. “Any time.”

Somehow, she actually believes him when he says that.

Clarke slips out of his apartment easily, letting the door close behind her with a quiet ‘snick’ but even as she makes her way to the end of the hall to the elevator, she still feels like she can feel the weight of his gaze on her shoulders.

* * *

She doesn’t speak to him at the station for the next couple of days.

It’s not that-- Clarke isn’t purposefully trying to be rude; it’s just that they’re busy with a bunch of minor calls all day long. Apparently the entire town has decided that they want to trim their tree branches before winter really and truly hits, resulting in at least a dozen calls a day of people accidentally pulling down power lines, falling off of ladders, and even a case where a man actually gets stuck in a tree and requires their assistance in coming down.

So yeah, things are a bit hectic around the station and  _ maybe _ if Clarke was a bit more fearless she would find time to approach him or even just talk to him outside of a professional capacity, but as it was, she’s a  _ scaredy cat _ .

But it’s been almost a week and his t-shirt and hoodie are sitting innocuously in the armchair beside her bed, reminding her of him every time her eyes catch on it.

So Friday sees Clarke pulling on her big girl panties and taking the train across town to his apartment to return his clothes. She’s well aware that she could have just done this at the station, but she can already  _ hear _ Monty’s pointed comments and see Raven’s all knowing smirk if they caught her. Which is ridiculous because it’s not like she has anything to  _ hide _ .

(She keeps telling herself that, even as her cheeks warm as she approaches his apartment.)

Earlier in the day she stopped off at the bakery a few streets over from the station to pick up those chocolate eclairs he used to like so much back when they were dating. No one would ever think it, but green juice drinking, six pack having Bellamy Blake had something of a sweet tooth and could most definitely be won over with chocolate. It was cute.

Now, standing in front of his door, Clarke can’t help but think that it was a stupid move on her part. He used to like the eclairs  _ five years ago _ . People can change in that time, can develop new likes and dislikes. Not to mention how  _ pathetic _ it made her seem that she remembered her ex boyfriend’s favourite dessert.

God, she’s such an  _ idiot _ .

She has half the mind to get rid of it now, before he has a chance to see it, but the box is much too big to fit in her purse, so she sighs and resigns herself to facing the inevitable embarrassment, and knocks on his door.

It doesn’t take long for him to open it, frowning in confusion as to who might be visiting at this hour. His frown only deepens when he sees her on the other side.

“Clarke?” he asks, giving her a cursory up-down, surprise colouring his tone.

She can feel the warmth rise to her cheeks. “Hey.”

He pulls the door a bit wider. “What are you doing here?”

The flush darkens. “I uh, came to give you back this,” she says, thrusting the bag with his clothes towards him. The box with the eclairs sits on top of it, the bakery’s insignia displayed boldly on the sticker holding the lid shut. 

He takes it from her and his mouth quirks up at the corners when he spots the sticker. “What’s this?”

“Eclairs from Becca’s,” she says while wishing for the earth to swallow her whole. “It’s a thank you. You know, for putting up with me last Friday.”

“Oh.” He’s not smiling anymore, instead looking at the box with newfound interest for a moment before his eyes snap back up to her. “I already told you it’s nothing. I would have done it for anyone else on the team.”

“I know I just-- wanted to do it,” she says, stumbling over the words a little.

Bellamy presses his lips together and regards her in silence for a moment. Meanwhile Clarke tries her best not to fidget.

Finally, he says, “Do you want to come inside for dinner?”

Safe to say that it’s the last thing she expected him to say.

Clarke blinks, taking a second to process it. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“You wouldn’t be,” he assures her, “I made slow cooker chilli and just put some cornbread in the oven, I always have lots of leftovers. Consider it a thank you for your thank you.”

“That’s not how it works,” she says, trying her best not to smile.

“Says who,” he shoots back at her, almost playful, and  _ oh _ , she missed this.

“Says me.”

“Oh come on, you and I both know that you’re probably going to order chinese food or something when you get back home so you won’t have to cook,” he says, “Why not just stay for like an hour tops and get a free meal out of it?”

She was planning on ordering in Thai so he’s not  _ that _ far off the mark.

“Fine,” she huffs, and he flashes her a quick grin that leaves her momentarily blindsided.

He holds the door open for her as she walks inside, toeing off her shoes in the entryway. She can already smell the spices mingling in the air with the warm sweetness of the cornbread and her stomach grumbles, reminding her that all she had for lunch today was a pitiful Cliff bar before they got pulled into a call.

“Do you want a beer?” he asks, already rifling through the fridge.

She remembers the awkward silence they had to endure when she stayed for breakfast last weekend. “Sure,” she says, hoping that the alcohol might help ease the tension between them.

He pulls out two bottles of craft and pries the caps off on a drawer handle. Clarke bites her tongue. When they were together she used to berate him for doing that all the time, telling him that he was going to wreck his handles. She even went as far as to buy him one of those novelty bottle openers off of Etsy. It cost like twenty bucks but there was a mini sculpture of Dionysis on the handle and it made him laugh so she considered it twenty dollars well spent.

Clarke wonders what happened to it after they broke up.

He has the TV on, a rerun of  _ Friends  _ playing on low in the background, and Clarke takes a sip of her beer. 

“When did you even have time to get these?” he asks, placing them in the microwave for the time being.

“Coffee break with Monty before we came back to the station,” she tells him. It was easy to convince Monty that she was buying them for herself as a treat after work. He was none the wiser about her  _ real _ plans.

“Surprised it managed to survive the station without those heathens snatching it up,” he says fondly as he peers through the glass door of the oven. “Miller has quite the sweet tooth.”

She can’t help but snort, “Yeah, sure  _ Miller _ is the one with the sweet tooth.”

She regrets it the moment it’s out of her mouth, her head immediately snapping towards him to gauge his reaction.

His back stiffens as it always does whenever there’s any reference to their past together, but instead of flinging a scathing comment her way, he just huffs out a tense laugh and says, “You got me.”

He’s making an effort she realises, and Clarke takes another pull of her beer to hide her reaction.

Well, if he could be civil then so can she.

Of course, it’s not like she came here to  _ fight _ with him. Clarke came to drop off his clothes as well as a little something extra as a thank you because she’s a nice person. She didn’t expect him to counter her niceness by inviting her in for dinner.

So Clarke stays for dinner, engaging in polite-- sometimes stilted, sometimes awkward-- conversation. She compliments his cooking and offers to do the dishes in return, he declines and gives her one of the eclairs to take home as well as a tupperware full of chilli.

This sets off a domino type effect.

Clarke buys him coffee on the way in to work the next morning as a thank you for the dinner, then Bellamy loans her an umbrella a few days later because of the rain, so of course she volunteers to do some of his paperwork in return. He buys her a small bottle of hand cream after hearing her complain about them getting chapped with the cold weather, and she fills his tupperware with homemade cookies before returning it to him.

It’s a very passive aggressive thank-you-war and quite possibly one of the most ridiculous things in her life.

Even more unfortunate, their coworkers seem to be catching on.

“What’s up with you and Blake?” asks Monty after she darts into Bellamy’s office to drop off a sub for lunch. It’s her turn to one up him since yesterday, when they got back from a call-- grease fire, nearly ruined half a kitchen-- she found a bottle of her favourite body wash in the house bathroom.

She doesn’t mean to blush. “Nothing,” she sniffs, “Why’d you ask?”

“Because you two have been acting  _ weird _ lately.”

“We’re not being weird.”

“You haven’t called him an asshole in the past few days.”

“I call him an asshole  _ all the time _ ,” she says, jabbing him in the ribs with her bony elbows, “Maybe you’re just not paying attention.”

“I pay attention.”

“Yeah, to Harper.”

Monty knocks his shoulder into hers, the two of them laughing, and mercifully lets the topic drop.

Later that afternoon, when the rest of the squad turns back up and they’re all shooting the shit in the common room, Clarke finds herself in the kitchen with Bellamy. He’s finagling with the ancient coffee machine in the kitchen, no doubt in preparation for the long shift ahead of them.

Monty is sitting by the counter, scrolling through his phone, and he has a direct view of the two of them.

Clarke hip checks Bellamy and says, loudly, “Hey asshole, you’re blocking the fridge.”

Bellamy doesn’t even hesitate for a second as he replies, “Fuck you, princess, have some patience.”

In the corner of her eye she sees the way Monty snorts and rolls his eyes, ducking his head so no one could see his silent laughter. Clarke thinks it’s a job well done.

* * *

The days drag on and so does this  _ thing _ between Bellamy and Clarke. Easy. Fun. Maybe even a little endearing if she lets herself really think about it.

It’s the little things like that which make her life a bit easier, things that help her sleep better and breathe easier, a reminder that life has more to offer than the tragedies she sees on a daily basis.

But life really does try its damnedest to remind her of those.

“Jesus,” she swears as she looks up in horror at the apartment complex almost fully engulfed in flames. The smoke is thick and heavy, dark plumes billowing in the last streaks of daylight as the sun starts to set in the horizon. The flames mix with the orange pink of the sky, the heat coming off of it incredible. Even here in the ambo, parked a safe distance away, she can feel the sear of it.

“You can say that again,” says Monty, grim, as he snaps on a pair of latex gloves, getting ready to jump into the melee.

They’re not the first squad at the scene; the Shenandoah apartment complex technically doesn’t fall within their jurisdiction, but for a fire that massive, the station needed all the help they could get.

They’re quick to arrange triage with the other paramedics on the scene, taking over care as the first ambo on the scene rushes to take a victim with a mix of second and third degree burns to the nearest hospital.

Patients who manage to escape with minor injuries get sent to them and luckily, the worst Clarke has to deal with is some minor burns and a laceration to a man’s eyebrow that he got from falling down the fire escape.

Her mind goes on autopilot as she deals with the victims. It all becomes a blur of oxygen masks, antiseptic, sutures and bandages. The worst of them go to one of the other paramedics and she intermittently hears the blear of the sirens as they pull off towards the hospital.

As much as she tries to wholly concentrate on her work, she still can’t help but notice the rest of the squad around her. She sees Gabriel and Roan lugging the heavy firehose to tackle the blaze from the eastern side, Harper, Monroe and Raven darting through thick plumes of smoke with civilians huddled under their arms, Miller and Bellamy gearing up to head  _ into _ the building itself.

That part always sends a healthy bolt of fear through her insides.

Her heart constricts painfully in her chest as she watches Bellamy adjust his mask before heading in once more, even as the flames burn hotter, slowly jeopardizing the structural integrity of the building. It’s just after 6 p.m., the middle of rush hour and they don’t know how many residents were home at the time of the blaze.

_ Snap out of it _ , she mutters to herself, turning back to her patient, an eight year old who she’s treating for smoke inhalation.  _ This is his job, you’ve seen him do it hundreds of times before. Now focus on yours _ .

And yet, Clarke can’t help but remember the spike of fear that always shoots through her when he does. Even at their worst, when she first came to the house, she used to worry for him. She worries about all of them and yet, a small, guilty part of her whispers that she worries about him more.

Harper guides another victim over to her-- female, mid forties, soot stains on her face-- and Clarke buries all thought of Bellamy and does her job.

The cloud of smoke thickens and she can feel the wild tendrils of hair that escaped her braid sticking uncomfortably to the back of her neck. The dry heat from the fire feels like it’s sucking all the air from around them while the crew tries in vain to contain it. Debris starts to crumble down the sides-- loose shingles, window frames, odd bits of wood-- and she spots Pike in a heated conversation with the other fire chiefs on hand, no doubt arguing whether to pull their officers or not.

Clarke thinks they should pull them.

But Clarke’s not a chief-- she’s not even a  _ firefighter _ \-- so her opinions means nothing. She gnaws on her bottom lip in worry as she monitors her patient’s O 2 sat.

The sun finally disappears under the horizon just as the building gives an almighty groan before a resounding  _ crack! _ rings through the air.

For a moment, everything seems to go silent, even the crackle and pop of the blaze, and they can all do nothing but watch in horror as the roof starts to cave in, seemingly moving in slow motion.

It crashes down, threatening to bring the rest of the structure down with it, and then everyone is a flurry of motion, teams working twice as hard and twice as fast to evacuate and clear the area, to save whoever they can save today.

She watches, making out the forms of those from her house-- Harper and Monroe chugging water by the cooler before dashing off again, Roan and Gabriel off to the side with Murphy as they carefully load a man on stretcher into a waiting ambulance, and Raven, her lips pressed into a thin line as she stands next to Pike.

Miller emerges from the remains of the building, a civilian held close to his body, looking, as far as she could tell, mostly unscathed. Pike absentmindedly pats him on the back as he walks the man over to the paramedics, his eyes still trained on the blaze at hand.

There was no sign of Bellamy.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” she swears, dread laying heavy in her stomach as she watches the inferno.

“He’ll make it,” Monty says, but even he couldn’t hide the worry lining his face as he jerkily fixes the mask around his patient.

“He was right there, right behind me,” Miller tells the chief, wrenching off his helmet and taking a bottle of water with a nod of thanks as he gasps. “We were coming down the stairs together. Where--”

She watches Pike try to get him over the radio but to no avail, and the ice in her veins seem to be tearing up her insides. 

The wind blows and the building creaks with it, another portion of the roof crashing through the floors below, and Clarke makes a wounded sound that’s lost in the bacchanal at the scene.

The worry sits tight on her chest and she can’t-- she can’t  _ lose  _ him. Not like this.

Pike barks at his team members to redouble their efforts. They only have mere minutes before the entire structure collapses, maybe even less, and who knows what state he might be in. The firefighters on scene continue to blast water at the blaze and Monty and Clarke jump into action, grabbing a field kit, C-collars, and a backboard though she prays to whatever higher power that may be listening that she wouldn’t have to use it.

_ Bellamy will make it _ , she repeats to herself like a mantra,  _ Bellamy will make it because this isn’t how it’s supposed to end. His story isn’t over. _

Oh how easy it is for the bitterness and last remnants of hate in her heart to be completely washed away by the waves of regret and fear and mind numbing  _ worry _ .

As much as she tries to deny it, Clarke Griffin still cares about Bellamy Blake. Perhaps even cares too much for him given the current state of affairs between them.

Now is not quite the time to be having revelations and epiphanies, and yet, she can’t help but stutter to a halt amidst all the chaos that surrounds her, her heart slowing then stopping then picking back up double-time as the realisation hits her full force. 

It’s both thrilling and terrifying, caring for somebody again.

(A small part of her wonders if she ever  _ really _ stopped caring after all. Clarke promptly grinds that part of her into the dirt and jogs back to the ambulance to get more supplies.)

Another ominous creak as the crackles grow louder, and she locks eyes with Monty, her fear and worry reflected on his face as the icy hand of it tightens its grip on her heart. Her hands are curled into fists, short nails biting into the skin of her palms. She doesn’t want to think of how she’d react if things end up going badly. She can’t think of that.

Flaming debris pitches down the side of the building, almost clipping a firefighter she doesn’t recognise and her breath catches. The building creaks again.

And then--

The vague outline of a figure, barely seen through the thick of it all.

_ Bellamy _ .

Relief so sweet that it makes her eyes water blooms in her chest, and his name drops from her lips in reverence.

He’s alive.

He stumbles through the smoke, a small child slung across his shoulder in a fireman’s hold, unconscious. His mask is off, hanging loosely around the girl’s head, and she can see the soot smeared across his cheeks.

His eyes find hers in the crowd and for a moment, everything else drifts away as he drinks in her form.

Clarke is jerked out of her stupor as Monty accidentally knocks her elbow as he races towards them and she ends up flushing, embarrassed to have been distracted like that while on the job.

Monty gets to them first of course, and Bellamy helps him lower the child onto the backboard and attach. She doesn’t miss how he winces as the movement puts strain on his shoulder but she places that on the backburner as she helps attach the C-collar to the girl as Monty begins his preliminary examinations.

Once she’s certain that the girl is secured, she turns back to Bellamy. Someone has given him a bottle of water and he’s talking softly to Pike, who stops and gives her a nod when he sees her turn towards him.

There’s so many things she wants to say to him right now, but Clarke has a job to do.

“Your shoulder,” she says while her eyes rove over the rest of him, avoiding the face where his eyes are bright with adrenaline. “Is it hurt?”

“It got hit,” he says grudgingly, “Didn’t dodge a piece of falling wood fast enough.”

Clarke purses her lips and nods. “Okay.”

She guides him back to the ambo, looping the nasal cannula across his face before he even has time to blink and forcing him to take an analgesic.

“Anywhere else besides your arm?” she asks, snapping on a clean pair of gloves as she prepares to examine him. He replies with a slight shake of his head.

He hisses as she pushes off his heavy outer jacket, leaving him in just a thin AFD t-shirt. It’s patchy with sweat and even through the cotton she can see the slight squaring of his left shoulder, the anterior protrusion of his humeral head. Bellamy grunts as she gently rolls up the sleeve.

“It’s dislocated,” she says, pursing her lips as she takes a small step back. “I’m gonna have to pop it back into place.”

“Oh, I bet you’ll  _ love _ that,” he says wryly and Clarke rolls her eyes.

“Funny,” she says, deadpan, “Maybe you should have dislocated your jaw instead.”

Bellamy actually  _ winks _ at her and she fully blames it on the smoke inhalation. He’s clearly not thinking straight. “You can do the honours for that one, princess. I know you’ve been itching for it for  _ years  _ now.”

She can’t stand him sometimes, truly. “You’re right, I have been,” she says easily as she does a quick examination of his arm, checking sensation and muscle tone just to make sure nothing else is wrong. “But your face is perhaps the only tolerable thing about you and it would be such a disservice to wreck it.”

It gets a rough bark of laughter out from him. Smirking, Bellamy leans forward until there’s just a few inches of space between them. He smells like smoke and sweat and  _ Bellamy _ , a dizzying combination and Clarke has to take a second to gather her bearings.

“You saying you think I’m pretty, Griffin?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow as he stares up at her, deep brown eyes open and warm, his face still charming despite the soot and ash smeared across it.

Clarke does her best to throw a withering glare his way despite the flush rising to her cheeks. “I’m  _ saying  _ you’re a difficult patient,” she shoots back at him “Now sit up straight so I can fix your shoulder.”

Still smirking he manages a rough, “Yes ma’am,” and does just what she asks, leaning against the ambo as he braces himself for the pain to come.

She places her hands on either side of his shoulder, leaning close and doing her best to ignore him, and Bellamy swears out loud as she pops the joint back in place. She can’t help but giggle. He flashes her a dirty look when she steps away from him after securing it in a makeshift sling and Clarke grins at him. 

“You’ll still have to go to the hospital,” she tells him as she adjusts the straps, “To make sure there’s nothing else wrong with you.”

"I'm fine."

It's Clarke's turn to hitch a brow. "Save it for the poor nurse who'll have to deal with you." She turns to Monty, who’s managed to rouse his patient and is softly questioning her as she blinks blearily at her surroundings. “Ready to go?” she asks.

He nods at her and the two of them manage to get the girl and Bellamy-- who grumbles at having to be taken to the hospital but is quickly silenced when Clarke fixes him with a glare-- in the back of the ambulance. 

“Parents?” she asks as they both pull off their gloves and get cleaned up. The smell of isopropyl alcohol never fails to make her eyes water.

He shakes his head. “She said that they were still at work. We’ll have to call when we get to the hospital..”

Clarke nods and jumps into the back of the ambo with their patients and Monty heads to the front to take them there.

Bellamy is there, crouched down next to the small girl, talking to her quietly. She’s tiny and frightened, looking impossibly small where she’s wrapped up in the shock blanket, but thankfully stable for now. He flashes her a tired smile and his knees creak as he straightens up. 

Clarke doesn’t know what possesses her to do it.

She grabs a swath of sterile gauze and wets it with some water before shuffling over to where he sat, already buckled in.

Bellamy looks at her questioningly when she sits next to him, a hand resting gently on his good shoulder.

“Your face,” she murmurs, gesturing to the cloth. 

Some of the confusion clears up at her explanation, but he still goes rigid when she leans in close, their knees knocking together.

Slowly, Clarke starts to clean the grime off of his face, one hand cradling his jaw while the other gently passes the cloth along his skin. His beard is scratchy against her palms and he looks up at her with dark eyes that send a spark of  _ something _ deep in her belly. Not for the first time she wonders what the beard would feel like rubbing against elsewhere on her body. She quickly banishes the thought.

The silence is shot through with an undercurrent of electricity, a livewire sparking between the two of them, and she swallows, desperate to say something to break it.

“Your beard is making this more difficult than it needs to be,” she says, trying to stop the coarse hairs from hooking onto the soft cotton for the umpteenth time.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, looking straight at her. She can feel the rumble of his voice against her hands.

Heat blooms, on her cheeks, and in other places, and she says, “I don’t like it.”

His lips quirk up slightly. “I’ll take that into consideration then.”

She gently passes it over his eyelids, his eyelashes long and thick and dark against his cheekbones. Each swipe of the gauze reveals the freckles that stain his skin and each minute that she’s leaning this close to him causes the flush on her cheeks to deepen.

She wonders if he can hear the way her blood is pounding in her veins. Wonders if his is doing the same.

After what feels like an eternity she finishes and Clarke exhales shakily, scooting away from him. Bellay’s eyes are heavy on her as she disposes of the gauze and cleans her hands. She takes a swig of water from her bottle and after a moment of consideration, she offers it to him. He takes it and drains the whole thing. Clarke tries to ignore the fact that her mouth was on that less than a minute ago.

Jesus, it’s like she’s back in elementary school again.

The initial spike of adrenaline is already settling in her veins, leaving sheer  _ tiredness _ in its wake. Bellamy probably feels the same too if she has to hazard a guess, judging from the way he sits next to her, eyes closed and head tipped back as he breathes deep and even. His side is almost flush with hers and his good shoulder knocks into hers whenever Monty goes over a speed bump. It’s the closest they’ve been in a while, bar that one drunken night a few weeks ago. She doesn’t know why but it makes her cheeks flush and insides warm.

The emergency team is already waiting for them when they pull up to the hospital, ushering Bellamy and the young girl inside, leaving Clarke and Monty to finally take a breather before they set about filling in the requisite paperwork.

They take their time with it, taking the moment to catch themselves. Still, split between the two of them, it doesn’t take that long to complete, and Monty signs his name on the last line with a flourish.

He stretches his arms, absentmindedly tubbing a knot in his neck while he plays with the ring on the keys to the ambo.

“You go on back to the station,” she tells him, shoving her hands in the pockets of her uniform, “I’ll wait for Bellamy.”

“You sure?” he asks, frowning a bit, “How are you gonna get back?”

Clarke waves him off. “Yeah. My shift’s over in about half an hour. And we can just take the train or I’ll call an Uber or something.” His face still shows some signs of doubt so she plasters on a reassuring smile. “It’s fine Monty. Now go take the ambo back to the House before Pike gets a stress ulcer.”

“He probably already has one,” he shoots back at her and she smiles. “Text me when you guys leave here, okay?”

She nods and sends him off with a lazy two fingered salute.

Clarke is tired after the day she’s had so she slumps down in one of the hard plastic chairs nearest to the nurses’ station with a cup of shitty hospital coffee and waits. Bellamy’s injuries weren’t serious-- she more or less fixed his shoulder on the spot and cleared him on site for smoke inhalation-- so he has to wait a while before he can be sent for his scans. She can see him through a crack in the curtains, slouched on the examination table, shirt off and a petulant frown on his face while he answers the nurse’s questions.

At least he’s answering the questions, she sighs, tipping her head back. Bellamy has always been the suffer in silence type, he never liked to accept help from people.

She doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but the next thing she knows, she’s jerked awake by someone throwing themselves into the chair next to her.

“Morning, Princess,” he drawls, looking amusedly down at her as she blearily rubs at her eyes. He’s in a much better mood now, no doubt due to the painkillers finally kicking in, and his arm is in a proper sling, cradled close to his AFD clad chest.

“Bellamy what the fuck,” she says, still trying to get a hold of her bearings.

He’s still grinning at her. “You fell asleep. In the hospital.”

“Yeah, I realised.” She has a crick in her neck now, and she rubs at it, disgruntled.

“What are you still here?” he asks, curious.

“I was waiting on you.”

“Oh.”

He looks genuinely  _ shocked _ at her answer and Clarke honestly can’t blame him. Now, as she looks back on it, that’s such a strange thing to say. He has an entire cohort of coworkers turned family at the station and yet the one that’s here for him happens to be his ex from five years ago.

“Where’s Monty?”

The light flush on her face deepens. “I told him to take the ambo back to the House. And the others were still on the scene.” She realises that since she knocked out, she has no idea if they left to go back or not. Clarke unlocks her phone and finds a text from Raven from fifteen minutes ago saying that they’re back at the station. She was asleep for almost an  _ hour _ .

“Just you, huh,” he says, his voice strange in a way that she struggles to place an emotion to.

She gives him a small smile. “Just me.”

Their eyes meet and she sees a swirl of emotions and feelings muddled in the depth of his, no doubt a reflection of hers. Clarke ends up being the one to look away first, clearing her throat.

“All cleared?” she asks, fidgeting with her hands in her lap. “I told Monty we’d take an Uber back to the station.”

“Yeah. They gave me a prescription for some pain meds that I need to collect though.”

“I’ll walk with you,” she says, itching to stretch her legs. She grabs her phone and opens the app. “Besides, we’ll have to wait for the Uber anyway.”

He shrugs his good shoulder. “Sure.”

It’s silent from then on, from the walk to the hospital pharmacy to the drive back to the station. It’s not entirely uncomfortable, but there’s a certain awkwardness that lingers in the air between them, an awkwardness that they’re both too tired to break.

They part ways at the station, Bellamy heading to Pike’s office and Clarke off to the dorms to shower and change.

Raven is the first one she meets when she ducks into the room to grab her toiletries bag.

“How is he?” she asks, a hair elastic held between her teeth as she combs through the wet strands, trying to wrangle it up into a ponytail.

“Dislocated his shoulder but fine otherwise. He’s off active duty for the next two weeks.”

She gives a sharp bark of laughter in response. “Oh I bet Bellamy is going to  _ love _ that.”

Clarke can’t help but grin wryly. “He’s with Pike right now, no doubt trying to figure out a work around for his situation. I think he’d rather risk permanent injury than have to sit behind a desk doing paperwork for two weeks.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong there.”

They chat a little more before Clarke is able to slip away to the showers, eager to get out of her uniform. Smoke still clings to the fabric, as well as the lingering scent of antiseptic. Her fingers work faster, undoing the buttons and getting out of the entire thing in record time, shoving her uniform into a Ziploc for wash later.

She takes a hasty shower, scrubbing her hair through with some 2-in-1 to get rid of the smell of smoke. There’s nothing more that she wants right now other than getting back to her apartment and crawling into bed after the day she’s had.

Clarkes finishes quickly and wrenches the tap shut before slipping on a pair of sweatpants and an old college sweatshirt. She’s scrunching her hair dry with the towel, not really looking where she’s going as she steps out of the bathroom, and as a result she almost walks right into a soft t-shirt clad chest.

“Oh!” she says, startled, and takes a step back.

Bellamy gives her a tired smile. “Watch where you’re going princess.”

A dull flush swirls on her cheeks. “Sorry.” She shuffles to the side a bit leaving more than enough room for him to pass. “Shower’s all free. There’s no one else in there.”

“I was planning on just taking one when I get home,” he tells her, pushing his hands in the pockets of his cargos. “I actually came here to uh-- find you. To ask if you wanted a ride back to your place.”

Clarke blinks. “Oh.”

He seems almost embarrassed now, focusing on the chipped tile by the sinks over her shoulder. “Yeah, as a thank you I guess. For treating me and staying at the hospital.”

She gives him a small smile even as her heart races in her chest. “Just doing my job.”

“Your job doesn’t entail staying at the hospital.”

“Well, I was just being nice,” she insists, the colour on her cheeks darkening and god, why does she have to be so  _ pale _ ? Her face is probably the colour of their truck parked in the garage right now. “Besides, you’re my-- coworker. I’d do it for anyone on the team.”

Coworker feels like such an impersonal way to describe their relationship and Clarke wants to cringe after it’s left her mouth.

But Bellamy doesn’t say anything about it, just ducks his head to hide his half a smile. “Even Murphy?”

She doesn’t know if he meant it or not, but his question gets a grin out of her. “Even Murphy,” she confirms, and he huffs out a breath of laughter.

“Still. It’s late. Let me drive you home.” He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it up. “It’s the least I can do.”

Clarke bites her lip and finally relents. “Sure.”

“Okay.” He nods.

“Okay.”

They both walk out of the bathroom together, walking down the hallways almost shoulder to shoulder, just like they did that night she got drunk, giving her a strange sense of déjà vu.

Bellamy must have been thinking along the same lines because he looks sidelong at her and asks, “Are you going to give me your address today?”

“Are you saying that you  _ don’t  _ want me to reappropriate your bed again?” she teases, shoving her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt as he holds the door open for her.

Bellamy opens his mouth to say something, no doubt to counter her snarky remark with one of his own, but then he pauses, choosing to smirk at her instead and say, “Nah, my back was sore from sleeping on the couch for the rest of the weekend.”

She hipchecks him lightly. “Not my fault you’re an old man,” she says, and he shoots her a mock glare.

“I’ll make you walk home instead,” he threatens, even as he unlocks the doors to the jeep for her to climb in.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she says as she reaches over to punch her address into his phone. It’s not that far from the station but it is in the opposite direction from his place.

He slips the key into the ignition and the jeep roars to life, some old eighties rock song flowing from the radio. They’re both too tired to hold any meaningful conversation, but Clarke leans back against the seat, staring out at the window. Unlike last time the tension and awkwardness is at an all time low, enabling her to just  _ be _ in peace.

It’s not long before he’s pulling up in front of her apartment complex and Clarke sighs, grabbing her bag from the backseat.

“Thanks for the ride,” she tells him, popping the door open and hopping out.

Bellamy shrugs. “What are friends for, right?”

She bites back a small smile. “Yeah,” she says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “Get home safe. Have a good night, Bellamy.”

“You too, Clarke.”

He doesn’t drive off until she hops up the stairs at the front of the building and Clarke gives an awkward little wave before pulling the door open and slipping inside.

There’s colour on her cheeks and a warmth in her stomach that she can’t describe, and she keeps repeating that little phrase in her head as she climbs the stairs up to her apartment.

_ What are friends for? _

It’s not something she’d ever thought she’d hear-- in fact, she never would have thought that she’d  _ want _ to hear it-- and yet, the words wash over her, warm and safe and welcoming, just like her newfound friendship with Bellamy Blake.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friendship with Bellamy Blake is… strange.
> 
> Clarke isn’t sure she knows how to be friends with him if she’s being honest with herself. They were never really just friends. A flirtationship for a month or so, lovers for a while, enemies up until recently. But friendship is different.

Friendship with Bellamy Blake is… strange.

Clarke isn’t sure she knows how to be friends with him if she’s being honest with herself. They were never really just friends. A flirtationship for a month or so, lovers for a while, enemies up until recently. But friendship is different.

The next time she shows up to work, she doesn’t expect to see Bellamy there given that he’s off duty for the next two weeks while his arm continues to heal. But, lo and behold, when Clarke walks in twenty minutes before her shift is about to start she finds Bellamy in their kitchen, wearing a grey tank top that is patchy with sweat and a pair of basketball shorts. He has his headphones on while he moves around the kitchen, the blender already going with his green smoothie as he pulls out the crate of eggs from their fridge.

Clarke cautiously steps in, pulling herself up on the chair by the counter, waiting to see how long it would take for him to notice her. The kitchen is empty save for the two of them, the rest of their squad not in as yet while the second team is in the process of getting ready to clock out.

He grabs a tall glass from the cupboard and flicks the blender off, nodding along to whatever song he was listening through his headphones.

Finally, after a couple moments of watching him, she says, “Why are you at work?”

It startles him and Bellamy jerks back in surprise, blinking owlishly when he realises that she’s sitting right there.

“Why shouldn’t I be at work?” he asks, pouring his smoothie out into a glass. He struggles a bit, arm still held in the sling and making it difficult to hold the glass steady, but he persists nonetheless.

She pins him in place with an unimpressed look. “Because you’re injured and you’re off active duty for the next two weeks.”

“ _Active_ duty,” he repeats, “It means I can’t be out on the field but I can still be at the station. Besides, I have a ton of paperwork to catch up on. I’m taking it easy, really.”

“Right.”

“It’s true.”

“Uh huh.” She hitches an eyebrow. “Last I checked taking it easy didn’t involve driving yourself to work with a bad arm _and_ working out.”

“It’s just cardio,” he grumbles, not meeting her eye. He knows that Clarke has him there, and it makes no sense to argue with her since she’s a healthcare worker whereas his skills only extend to basic life support. “It’s supposed to be healthy.”

“And the driving?”

Bellamy scowls at her, silent, and she just flashes him a sweet grin.

“Shut up Clarke,” he mutters, the tips of his ears going red as he turns his back to her, fiddling with the coffee maker instead of meeting her gaze.

Clarke’s eyes track the way the sling dips, his forearm gone horizontal instead of being parallel to the floor, and she rolls her eyes as she pushes off the stool. 

“I can’t believe you fucked up your sling already,” she grumbles, sidling up next to him and yanking on the straps. Maybe she’s a bit too rough but Bellamy deserves it for being _stupid_ . “Honestly, it’s like you _want_ to permanently damage your shoulder.”

“I didn’t even do anything,” he objects, turning his body towards her so that it’s easier to readjust it. She’s standing right in his space and every single breath she takes is tainted with the smell of musk and sweat and _Bellamy_ , and god, she wants to _die_.

(In the before times it used to be comforting. She’d be lying on his chest, both of them naked and breathing heavy, the sheets tangled around their legs as she drew mindless patterns across his skin.)

The memory of it springs unbiddenly to the forefront of her mind and Clarke finds herself flushing as she tightens his straps.

“You need to be more careful,” she chastises him, securing his elbow in place and making sure it’s comfortable for him. “You’re wearing it this way for a _reason_. If it gets too loose from you doing things that you know you’re not supposed to be doing then you can make things worse.”

“Alright, I get it,” he sighs, giving in, “No more exercising while I’m wearing the stupid thing.”

“And?”

“Oh no.” He shakes his head. “I’m still driving, princess. There’s nothing you can do to change my mind about that.”

Clarke just sighs.

“Next time it’s fucked up I’ll leave you just like that,” she tells him, and he barks out a laugh. “I’m not your personal nurse. I didn’t train for that.”

“Nah, you just went to med school instead,” he shoots back at her, snarky.

Her flush deepens and she steps back from him. “That clearly didn’t stick,” she says brusquely as she rounds the counter to perch once more on the stool.

She’s hoping that Bellamy would pick up on her tone and stiff body language and drop the subject. Unfortunately for her, Bellamy either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Probably the latter. He’s always been fond of being a perpetual thorn in her side.

“Whatever happened to that?” he asks, regarding her curiously.

“Happened to what?” she says, playing dumb.

He gives her an unimpressed look. “Med school.”

“Oh.” Clarke gnaws on her lip for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to answer his question. 

Several things _happened_ : their breakup, moving to the other side of the country to be on her own, pursuing a degree that her heart wasn’t 100% in. She could tell him that he was right, that she was miserable working long days and coming home to an empty apartment just to work some more, that there were people in her programme that gave it their all while Clarke was just there, complaining and dragging her feet. Not to mention the sheer _loneliness_ she felt, depression wrapping itself like a heavy shroud around her shoulders while she struggled to keep her head above water in those first few months.

She doesn’t want to tell Bellamy that he was right about all of it.

Eventually she just settles on, “I dropped out after a semester.”

“Huh.”

He keeps his face impassive as he says it and she can’t quite get a read on his tone.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, voice dipping a bit into defensive territory. 

He lifts his hands in surrender. “Nothing,” he says, “I just thought you’d have stuck it out, even if you hated it. You’ve always been stubborn like that.”

She’s not sure whether that was supposed to be an insult, compliment or both.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t,” she says with a jerky half-shrug of her shoulder. “I was friends with a couple of the paramedics at the hospital and even though I didn’t like med I still wanted to help people so I signed up for an EMT course and the rest is history.”

Bellamy hums again just as the coffee maker clicks off and for a moment he busies himself pouring both of them a mug full. He adds sugar and cream just as she likes and Clarke ducks her head, biting back a smile.

All these years later and he still remembers how she takes her coffee. For some reason it sends a weird feeling through her stomach.

He slides it over the counter towards her and she murmurs her thanks, taking a sip while he braces himself on his forearms, attention still on her. 

“That was in California, right?” he asks, head cocked to one side as he observes her. At her nod he continues, “Pike said you transferred in from Chicago.”

She takes a sip of her coffee to avoid having to answer immediately. Her time in Chicago is still a lot to get over and Clarke’s not sure if she wants to delve into the nitty gritty details with her ex of all people in the breakfast nook of the firehouse.

“I applied to the paramedic programme there after I finished my EMT training,” she says, trying to keep the tightness out of her voice. “My friend-- Wells-- used to live there. It’s why I chose the spot in the first place.”

Bellamy knows about Wells from their time together. They’ve never met, but he’s seen pictures and she’s told him all sorts of stories about him. 

Unfortunately that also means that he knows Wells travels a lot for work, never staying in one spot longer than a year. That little tidbit combined with the fact that he can tell Clarke is being cagey and hiding something from him leads Bellamy to press on. “Must have really liked it if you stayed out there for, what, four years?”

“Give or take a few months,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Chicago must have been special if it kept you away from Arkadia for so long,” he says, hitching a brow and daring her to contradict him.

“It served its purpose,” she sighs, thinking about the people she met, friends she made, heartbreak she felt. “I did miss home though.”

Bellamy takes a sip of his coffee. “What made you leave?”

She thinks of Lexa, how she was the first person she really opened up to after her breakup with Bellamy and how she not only betrayed her trust, but hurt her almost more than anyone else in her life and didn’t seem to feel a single bit of remorse.

Clarke doesn’t like to dwell on these sorts of things which is why she pastes a smile on her face and leans in closer before saying, “Come on Bellamy, a girl has to have some secrets.”

“It’s a fair question,” he points out, unconsciously mimicking her and swaying closer. “But fine, don’t tell me now.”

“Great.”

“But you’ll tell me eventually.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Clarke.”

“Bellamy.”

“Come on.”

“Well maybe if you’re nice to me…”

“I’m _always_ nice to you, princess.”

She grins-- a real grin-- and pokes him in the side of his cheek. “Now that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told in your life.”

He grins back at her, soft and heartbreakingly charming and _oh--_ her heart gives a little flip in her chest.

“Good _morning_ ,” drawls Raven, looking like the cat who caught the cream as she slinks into the kitchen, causing them both to jump. “Oh don’t mind me, I’m just here to get some coffee. Carry on with… whatever _this_ is.”

Clarke’s certain that her face is scarlet judging from the way her skin is burning and even Bellamy seems embarrassed judging by the slight darkening of his skin. She can only imagine what it is Raven thought she stumbled upon, the two of them drinking coffee together, _smiling_ , with just a few inches of space between them. She doesn’t think it’s possible but she’s pretty sure that her flush gets deeper.

Bellamy clears his throat, pushing away from her. “I’m going to take a shower,” he mutters, placing his still half full coffee cup in the sink and stalking out of the kitchen as fast as he could without running.

Raven cackles as she pours herself her own cup. “Wanna tell me what that was all about?”

“We were just _talking_ ,” Clarke says with a roll of her eyes.

“ _Sure_.”

It’s the tone of voice she says it in that makes Clarke feel _guilty_ for some reason which is dumb because she wasn’t even _doing anything_. “Shut up and make your breakfast,” she grumbles.

Her laughter follows her out of the kitchen as Clarke goes to sulk and steep in embarrassment in the common room. Knowing Raven, the entire squad will no doubt hear an exaggerated version of this morning’s events before noon.

Her theory is proven right when she gets in the ambo with Monty after dropping a patient off at the hospital and he turns to her with a smirk and says, “So you and Bellamy…” and Clarke finds herself groaning.

Despite all the rumours that are swirling through the house, she finds herself spending more time with Bellamy more often than not these days. They even text too, having started after he went home from the hospital and she wanted to make sure he was okay. Their text threads and short and concise, a bit stilted at times, but it still gives her an illicit thrill when she checks her phone and sees his name there at the top.

She knows what it sounds like but they’re just _friends_. Friends text each other. It’s normal. Shut up.

Since he can’t head out into the field with them, Bellamy’s been doing the grunt work around the station: the paperwork, cleaning, cooking, getting groceries. He makes sure they have actual food to eat in the fridge and successfully bullies Clarke into eating something other than cliff bars for lunch, which she usually ends up spending in his office with him.

It’s nice, she has to admit, the cozy quietness of his office when compared to the chaos of the kitchen and common room. As lieutenant he has the benefit of some privacy, even though his office isn’t huge. It’s just big enough to hold a single cot, some drawers, and a desk covered in files and paperwork.

“For a self proclaimed neat freak your desk is a disaster,” she tells him one afternoon, pushing a half finished report on a restaurant kitchen fire out of the way so she could set down her bowl. She just got back from a call and saw that the squad had a spread of takeout laid out in the kitchen, as customary for their Friday shifts, and grabbed two bowls of everything before slipping into his office.

Bellamy closes his laptop with a sigh and sets it on top of his bed, out of the way of the chaos. “Don’t remind me,” he says, taking the bowl from her with murmured thanks.

Clarke begins to systematically pick out all of her green peppers and slide them across to him. “How’s it been so far?”

“Clearly no one in this house knows how to write a proper report,” he says, spearing a piece of sweet and sour chicken perhaps a bit too viciously. “Either that or they all know I would end up rewriting it anyway so they decided to halfass it.”

“Probably the latter,” she says as she tries to rip open a packet of soy sauce with her teeth. “You spoil them.”

“I do not.”

“Okay fine. You’re a perfectionist and everyone knows it. Why put effort into something when you’re gonna rip it to shreds anyway.”

He’s silent for a minute, mulling over her words. Finally he says, “Shut up, Clarke, it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Principle my ass,” she snorts and then flicks a stray piece of sweet pepper his way.

It hits his chin and she almost chokes while laughing at the expression on his face.

* * *

Birthdays stopped being a big thing for Clarke after she turned sixteen. When she was a child they were the most magical things in her life-- huge parties, tons of presents, no bedtime and she was allowed to eat as much cake as she wanted. The relationship between her parents wasn’t strained as yet, her dad wasn’t dead as yet, and Clarke was still soft and naive about the world.

Her parents separated the summer before she turned seventeen and her dad died alone in his apartment before she turned eighteen.

In college Clarke used her birthdays as an excuse to get drunk but if she’s being honest back in college you barely even needed an excuse to get drunk.

Now she doesn’t really care about them.

Her birthday falls in the middle of the week this year and her plans for the day involve going to work and opening a bottle of wine when she gets home. She might stop by her favourite indian place on the way home to pick up dinner and she already plans going to Becca’s bakery after her shift over and buying a box of her gourmet cupcakes.

Abby is busy today, having a shift scheduled at the hospital, but she promised to take herto lunch on her next day off to celebrate. She’s not bothered by it; while the relationship between Clarke and her mother has been strained for years, they’ve both been making an effort since she moved back to Arcadia. They even have monthly lunch dates to catch up.

All in all Clarke doesn’t have a super busy day planned. She gets up and gets ready to go to the station, hair up in a braid and uniform on as always. She does put on her expensive perfume that she saves for special occasions though, and swaps her simple stud earrings to the diamond hoops her dad gave her for the last birthday before he passed.

She takes the train to get to work, just like any normal day.

What she doesn’t expect when she walks into the station is the giant birthday banner hanging in the common room and her entire squad standing behind a cake.

“Happy birthday!” they yell out at her when she walks in the room, and Clarke blinks owlishly at it all.

“Oh my god,” she says, laughing a little as she cautiously steps further into the room. She’s immediately accosted by friends, Raven looping a happy birthday sash around her body and Monty perching a plastic tiara on top of her head. “Oh my _god_.”

“Are you sufficiently surprised?” asks Harper, pulling her into a bear hug while Monroe snaps photos from every angle.

“Definitely,” she nods, half distracted by the number of hugs she’s receiving. She’s being passed from person to person like a dollar note. “I don’t even know what to say to all of this, you guys. Wow, thank you. You’re so sweet.”

“It was Bellamy’s idea,” says Gabriel, nudging the other man with his elbow, “He suggested it.”

The man in question stands before her, arm still in a sling and clearly disgruntled to be put in the spotlight like that. There’s a dark flush under his freckles, barely noticeable to anyone who’s not looking but Clarke sees it. “It was _Monty_ who asked what we should do for your birthday,” he grumbles, “I just reminded them that you don’t like to make a big deal out of things. That’s all.”

“Don’t forget you handled the cake too,” Raven says slyly and he shoots her a death stare, even while the flush darkens, staining his skin bronze.

“I’m desk bound and it’s really not that hard to make a phone call,” he grunts, “All I did was collect it.”

“Well, thank you nonetheless,” says Clarke, looking up at him. She hesitates for a moment before stepping forward and wrapping her arms around him in an awkward hug.

He’s stiff in her embrace and she has to lean up on her tiptoes to properly get her arms around his shoulders, but after a brief moment he softens and hugs her back, hands ghosting across her waist and holding him to her.

“Happy birthday, princess,” he murmurs into her hair, soft, just for her to hear.

The hug is over soon and she pulls back, a delicate flush on her cheeks as she clears her throat. “Anyone else think it’s kind of ironic to be lighting candles in a fire station?”

“Irony or sheer genius, I say,” says Murphy, shrugging, “Try not to burn us all to a crisp, Griffin.”

“For you Murphy, I make no promises.”

Roan hands over a lighter and Raven lights them all, including the ones that spark and pop, making Clarke jump back in surprise. They all sing an off-key version of happy birthday and then she’s left to blow out the candles, laughing when she realises that they sneaked some trick ones in there as well.

It’s only when Clarke threatens to bring out the fire extinguisher does Raven relent and let her pluck them out, dumping them in the sink where they finally sputter out.

“Are we having cake for breakfast?” she asks, lifting an eyebrow at Bellamy, “It really must be my special day.”

“Don’t get used to it, princess,” he cautions, his lips twisting into a wry smile, and Clarke laughs before leaning over swiping a stripe of chocolate across his cheek.

The surprise birthday cake lifts everyone’s spirits, even Chief Pike, who gives her a clap on the shoulder when they stop by his office to give him a slice. It’s still a work day though, and they can’t just sit around and do nothing all day. Thankfully nothing too crazy is going on, just the normal kitchen fires and car accidents and school visits to go to. Clarke and Monty pop in and out sporadically, dealing with the usual calls, and when they get back to the station after lunch, they find the crew doing their training exercises.

“We have plans once our shift is over,” says Raven when she spots them. She’s hauling the heavy coil of a fire hose, a light sheen of sweat already covering her body despite the cool late October weather.

Clarke raises her brow. “I wasn’t aware.”

“That’s why I’m telling you now, silly,” Raven says, clucking her tongue and tapping her boot with her own. “It’s your birthday, so we’re going out.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

“It’s part of the whole surprise thing.”

“I don’t know Raven…,” she hesitates, “You know I don’t like going out that much.”

“Yeah, yeah, we all know you’re a total homebody who’s idea of a birthday celebration is going home to a bottle of wine and take out food and binging Netflix.” She stares at her, daring her to contradict that statement, and all Clarke can do is blush because yeah, she has her there. “I’m just saying we could make it a bit better, you know? Actually celebrate it, just for a little while.”

As far as arguments go, hers is pretty sound and Clarke can’t deny that it would be nice to do something _fun_. She worries her lip for a moment before finally relenting. “Fine. But when I say I want to leave, we’re leaving.”

“Deal.”

The rest of their shift goes pretty well. They keep the birthday banner up in the common room and Clarke bullies Murphy into cooking for them since he’s by and large the best chef out of all of them.

(Although, if she was being honest, that title would go to Bellamy but Clarke may be a bit biased.)

(Not that it means anything of course.)

She ducks out of the room when her mother calls and she and Abby have a brief, but civilised conversation, exchanging pleasantries and birthday wishes and then confirming that they’re still meeting up this weekend. They’re both on the clock which means the phone call only lasts five minutes at the very most.

Monty hands her a mug of coffee when she comes back in and she shoots him a thankful smile before shuffling back to the kitchen to add a bit more milk. Meanwhile Miller is in the common room, regaling them with tales of his undergrad, horror stories really, served with the theatrics that only he could bring to the table.

Bellamy is in the kitchen, washing dishes, and she rolls her eyes when she sees that he’s using both hands.

“You’re a stubborn asshole, you know that?” she asks, bumping her hip into him deliberately as she grabs the milk from the fridge.

“So you’ve made your life’s mission to tell me,”he quips, and she rolls her eyes before pinching the thin skin of his tricep.

Clarke sets her coffee cup on the counter and reaches over to adjust his sling like she’s been doing every few days since Bellamy can’t take things easy.

She steps into his space again, just like she did that morning early last week, and just like then she’s immediately hit the smell of him-- his cologne, his body wash, just _him--_ comforting and annoying at the same time. The air is thick with tension, the weight of so many unspoken words lingering between them. It should make things awkward, make her want to speed up just so she can step back and put some distance between them, but instead, Clarke finds herself slowing down, taking her time.

“Enjoying your birthday so far, princess?” he rumbles out while she’s fixing the straps.

She looks up at him and finds his surprisingly heavy gaze trained on her and Clarke shivers, ducking her head. “It’s nice. Definitely one of the more fun ones.”

“Well I’m glad our efforts live up to her royal highness’s standards,” he says, lips quirking up to one side.

She huffs. “I did have to dock points for there not being a pony. Come on Bellamy, I’ve had ponies for at least seven of my birthday parties,” she teases him.

It gets a short burst of soft laughter out of him. “Next time I’ll call my friends at APD. See if I can pull some strings and get you a horse.”

“It’s the least you can do,” she sniffs and they both end up laughing together.

It reminds her of before, when she’d make a dumb pun or he’d interject with a snide joke, and they’d both end up giggling like a pair of fools together. Bellamy gets a slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes when he laughs, one that has deepened with age, but still somehow he manages to look years younger when he laughs.

She remembers back when they were dating, how he was always stressed about something or the other-- work, bills, his sister, night classes that seemingly went nowhere-- but now he looks like a little bit of that weight has been lifted off of his shoulders.

It makes her happy to see.

Bellamy would gladly bear the weight of the world on his shoulders without complaint if it meant that the people he cares about would be free. He’s a self ascribed Atlas, taking on the jobs and duties that no one else wants.

Clarke doesn’t realise that she’s staring at him until the mirth slowly slips off of his face leaving a slightly confused look instead.

She clears her throat, averting her gaze while her cheeks flush. “Sorry,” she murmurs, eyes trained on the discoloured backsplash instead of him.

Bellamy says nothing which just serves to further her embarrassment. Trying to save herself, Clarke continues, “We should probably head back.” _Don’t need Raven to start another set of rumours_ , she adds silently in her head.

“You go on without me,” he says with a jerk of his chin, “I’m going to finish up the dishes.”

She shakes her head. “You never learn, do you.”

He’s grinning when he says, “Nope,” placing emphasis on the p with a pop.

Their night is blissfully quiet, only two calls that they needed to attend to. Clarke plans on sneaking out of the station the next morning before Raven can accost her but she should know better by now that no one pulls a fast one on Raven Reyes.

“I’ll come over by your place tonight, yeah?” says Raven, tossing her sleek ponytail over a shoulder.

“If I say no will that actually stop you?” sighs Clarke as she runs a weary hand through her tangled curls.

The other girl grins at her with all teeth. “No it will not,” she says, “But points to you for trying.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She pauses for a moment to tap something into her phone. “I’ll come on over for like six-ish or so to help you get ready. I already told Harper and Monroe. We can make a girls’ night out of it.”

“The more the merrier,” Clarke says wryly and she’s certain that the sarcasm goes right over Raven’s head because she nods along, seriously. Well, either that or she chooses to ignore Clarke’s tone, both of which are plausible options. “And you’re still not going to tell me what you have planned?”

“It’s a surprise,” she teases, “Come on, live a little. Give up control for a bit and let loose.”

She gives a shaky sigh. “I have no idea how to do that.”

“Well you’re going to learn today.” Again she pauses to tap something into her phone. “Do you want me to invite anyone else for tonight besides us? Any other friends?”

She shakes her head. “No, trust me, you all are more than enough.”

Truth be told, Clarke doesn’t really have a lot of friends outside of work. Or any friends for that matter. The only non-work friend she has is Wells, who’s currently in England with his father doing something or the other for their company.

It’s kind of lonely if she thinks about it long enough.

Which she doesn’t of course. Clarke is the queen of compartmentalisation after all.

She chats with Raven a little while longer, trying to pry the truth out, but the other girl is as tight lipped as they come. When it’s getting close to the time that her train arrives, she gathers her stuff and makes her way to the station to go home. She makes a mental to do list on the ride there-- laundry, make a shopping list, make something to eat-- and she makes sure that she gets all of it done before settling into bed to get some sleep before Raven shows up to terrorise her.

True to her word, Raven calls her just past six when Clarke is coming out of the shower to tell her that she and the other girls are just a few minutes away. She throws on a pair of running shorts and an oversized t-shirt while she waits, focusing on detangling and drying her hair.

The excitement is beginning to set in a little bit and while Clarke has no doubt in her mind that it’s going to be something that involves lots of loud music and alcohol, she is looking forward to a night out. She hasn’t done anything like this since college and going out with a large group like this, well, it makes her feel like she has friends.

And it is fun, pregaming and getting ready with them. Harper scored a bottle of luridly pink bubblegum flavoured moonshine from Monty and Monroe has a playlist of early 2000s tunes that they find themselves jamming out as they get ready.

“You have such an amazing rack,” says Raven as she leans in close to fix the falsies she masterfully applied to her top lashes for her. She really went all out for Clarke’s makeup, leaving her feeling like a Barbie doll come to life. “You should show it off more.

Clarke flashes her a withering look. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m styling the uniform.”

They don’t tell her where they’re going, just ushers her into an Uber almost two hours later, all of them giggly and tipsy from the moonshine.

She doesn’t really pay attention to how long it takes them to get to wherever they’re going, but she knows that the Uber drops them off somewhere uptown and she knows that the boys are already there, waiting on them.

“Finally,” says Murphy as he watches them try and fail to gracefully pull themselves out of the car, “We’ve been waiting here forever. Some of us have people to do and things to see.”

“I’m sure Emori can wait, John,” says Monroe, flipping him off, “Besides she’s working tonight, isn’t she?”

The two of them get into a debate, one that Clarke doesn’t even bother keeping up with-- she’s never even met Emori, only heard of her from stories-- and she focuses on trying to get out of the Uber without falling on her ass. It turns out that after about half an hour or so she really starts to feel the effects of Monty’s moonshine.

She gets one leg out the door and then the other, but it’s the ground that’s not cooperating with its unevenness, making it hard for her to actually _stand up_.

“Easy there, birthday girl,” a voice rumbles a fraction of a second before a warm arm wraps around her waist and a hand firmly grips her bicep, steadying her. “There we go.”

She’s immediately hit with the dark, woodsy smell of cologne and when she glances up at her saviour it’s Bellamy she finds smirking down at her, his face entirely too close to hers. Clarke isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol that’s making her see things or what, but she swears that his eyes dip down, taking in her outfit for a brief second. Gooseflesh erupts all over her skin and it’s not just because of the cold night air.

“Thanks,” she swallows. He looks good. Not that-- he always looks good if she’s being honest. But he looks really good in dark jeans, white t-shirt and dark leather jacket that matches hers. He’s not wearing his sling but Clarke knows that he had a doctor’s appointment today so he must have been given the all clear. Either that or he’s just being stubborn again. It’s a toss up.

“No problem.” His hand is still resting on the small of her back and she can feel the heat of it even through the thick barrier of her jacket. “How are you already drunk without even getting inside?”

A dull flush makes its presence known on her cheeks as she fidgets with the short hem of her dress. It’s a gorgeous emerald cocktail dress that she’s had since her college days, a low cowl neckline and a high hemline, almost sinfully tight in the way it wraps around her hips. “We pregamed back at my place,” she explains without looking at him, “Monty gave Harper some moonshine to bring over.”

“Dangerous stuff,” he muses and she can hear the mirth in his voice. She lightly slaps his arm in retaliation and he really does laugh this time.

She has more to say-- she always has more to say when it comes to Bellamy whether it be an insult, a snarky comeback… an apology-- but Raven interrupts by yelling, “If you two are done canoodling, come on! Tick tock!”

It only serves to make Clarke’s flush bloom deeper and she hurries off, leaving Bellamy behind as she walks next to Raven.

“Canoodling? Seriously?” she hisses.

The other girl just shrugs and tosses her pin straight dark hair over her shoulder. “I only speak the truth.”

“You’re a menace, that’s what you are.”

“Chin up, Griffin,” she tells her, grinning widely, “That’s no way to start your birthday night of debauchery.”

“There will be no debauchery,” she sputters, “We’re just here to have fun. You know, drink, maybe dance a little.”

Raven sighs. “Only you can make a fun night out sound boring,” she says before walking off in front and leaving Clarke dumbfounded.

It turns out that Raven’s secret idea was to go to _Nightblood_ , a trendy new club in town. Clarke’s not going to lie, back in college places like this used to be right up her alley, but now she finds herself fending off a migraine at the thought of pounding music and flashing lights.

Bellamy must have read her mind because he falls instep beside her and leans down, whispering, “Don’t feel bad about dipping early. Thursdays are 2-for-1 on entry and drinks at this place.”

His lips brush the shell of her ear and she has to repress a shiver. Clarke’s strong though, and she flips her hair over a shoulder and flashes him a smirk. “Hey it’s my birthday. If I’m not paying then it’s not my problem.”

“Of course not,” he says and she can hear the smile in his voice.

“In fact,” she adds, throwing caution to the wind and flashing him a flirty smile, “You can buy me my first drink.”

Clarke knows she’s not imagining it this time when his eyes flick down, giving her a quick once over, and his voice seems deeper when he says, “It’ll be my pleasure.”

Raven apparently has an in at the new club (“More like he has it in _me_ ,” she snickers, cosmo in hand, “His name is Shaw and he’s a bouncer for this place.”) and was able to pull some strings for them to skip the line and head right in. She’s even gotten them a booth for the night, something Clarke is forever grateful for since it means there’ll be somewhere for her to rest her tired feet in between dancing.

And there’s going to be a lot of dancing judging from the good sized dancefloor on the lower level, all neon lights and trembling bass.

“Come on,” says Raven, grabbing her hand, “Celebratory birthday shots!”

She tugs her in the direction of the bar and Clarke has no choice but to go with her.

That sets the tone for the rest of the night, Raven pulling Clarke wherever she pleases-- to the bar to do more shots, to the dancefloor where they flail around more than anything else, to the bathroom to take blurry mirror selfies. She finds herself having more fun than she anticipated, screaming out the words to some 2000s Britney Spears song alongside Harper until they’re both breathless and giggling.

After about two hours of high energy dancing followed by another half hour of Raven trying and failing to teach her how to do body rolls, she taps out for a break, getting a bottle of water from the bar before heading back up to their booth. 

Miller and Bellamy are there but she doesn’t pay them any attention, instead flopping back on the couch and chugging half the water in one go. She can feel the way her hair is sticking to the nape of her neck, her skin flushed and overheated, and she shrugs off her jacket hoping that it’ll help cool her down. She didn’t realise how hot it was until a few minutes ago, or how thirsty she was either.

Clarke tips her head back, eyes drifting shut, and takes a moment to take it all in. It must be the alcohol thrumming through her veins that’s making her feel like this, weightless and carefree, not a worry to her name. She can feel the throbbing of the bass rattling her bones, taking root in her soul. Behind her eyelids she continues to see the muted bursts of strobe lights and she finds herself sighing and sinking further into the rather uncomfortable couch.

“Having fun yet, princess?” a bemused voice asks, seemingly coming from above her.

She cracks a single eye open and finds Bellamy smirking down at her.

“I should be asking you that question,” she mumbles, trying and failing to glare at him. “You’ve been sitting on that couch _brooding_ since we got here.”

“I don’t brood.”

“Do too.” She sits up now, hunching over her knees and propping her chin up with her hands. “You’re the king of brooding. Which is what you’ve been doing all night. You didn’t even buy me a birthday drink.”

“Oh and we can’t have that,” he says with a roll of his eyes. He abruptly stands up and disappears into the crowd, leaving Clarke alone with Miller, who sat on the other end, texting someone.

“Are you being a brooding bastard too?” she asks.

He lifts his glass towards her-- some mixed cocktail that she can’t quite make out-- and she grins at him. “Taking a break to talk to my boyfriend,” he says and Clarke gives him a solemn nod.

“Important stuff.”

“Very.”

Bellamy chooses this moment to come back with a whiskey sour in hand and offers it to her. “I believe I owed you a drink,” he says, voice pitched low and a dangerous smirk on his face.

Clarke takes it easily, lifting a brow as she takes a sip. “What, nothing for you?”

“Nah,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets, “Volunteered to be DD for the night.”

She blows a raspberry his way. “Lame.”

“You won’t be saying that when it’s 2 a.m. and you’re ready to leave and _don’t_ have to wait on an Uber,” he shoots back at her, “Besides, I’m still on some painkillers.”

He does have a point there but Clarke’s far too stubborn to concede it so instead she plucks the twist of orange skin and flicks it at him. He sees it coming of course, and manages to lazily bat it out of the way.

They lapse into a comfortable silence, content with just people watching as she catches her breath.

When Clarke finally finishes her drink she sets the empty glass on the table and stands up, offering a hand to Bellamy.

For a moment he just stares at it, unmoving, and then, “What?”

“Come dance with me.”

He snorts. “I don’t dance.”

“But it’s my birthday,” she wheedles.

“Pass.”

“Bellamy.”

“Clarke.”

“Come on, _please_ ,” she tries one more time, pout in full effect, “I promise I won’t ask for anything else.”

“Somehow I don’t believe that.”

She continues to pout until he sighs, running a hand through his messy curls. “Alright fine,” he grumbles as he stands up and offers a hand towards her. “But it’s just for one song.”

Clarke grins up at him and takes his hand, smacking a quick drunken kiss to his cheek. “I’m ignoring that last part,” she says, pulling him behind her.

“Somehow I’m not surprised to hear you say that.” She doesn’t even have to look at him to know that he’s rolling his eyes at her.

The club isn’t that packed-- it _is_ a Thursday night after all-- which means there’s plenty of room on the dance floor. She finds the rest of the squad relatively easily and they all cheer when they see her stumbling towards them with a disgruntled Bellamy Blake in tow.

“It must be a birthday miracle,” says Monty, slurring a little as he throws his arms around both of their necks. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bellamy dance.”

“Because I don’t,” he says dryly. No one pays him any attention.

Another early 2000s pop song starts to play, gaining an emphatic ‘whoo’ from Harper, and Clarke can’t help but keep up that same level of energy. Calling what they’re doing dancing would definitely be a stretch-- it’s mostly flailing and jumping and scream-singing the lyrics to what is essentially their middle school playlist.

Bellamy tries his best to remain stoic but she can tell that it’s with much difficulty. In fact, she even sees him crack a smile or two and twirl Raven around when she ambushes him. His movements are jerky and exaggerated and it couldn’t be more obvious that he didn’t want to be doing this, but then he spots Clarke looking at him and he flashes her a grin that makes her stomach flutter.

“You’re such a dumbass,” she tells him, her hand somehow finding itself in his. She can’t help but notice how much bigger his hand is than hers, practically engulfing her small one in his. It’s warm and rough and she is intimately familiar with how those hands feel against her bare skin. Clarke swallows, her mouth suddenly dry.

Bellamy just continues to grin at her, leaning in close so she’s suddenly hit by the scent of his cologne. “You’re the one who forced me to come out here,” he says, “What if I reinjure my shoulder.”

“Then you’d have deserved it,” she sniffs.

“That doesn’t sound like sound medical advice.”

“I’m off the clock,” she informs him while grabbing a shot from Roan as he passes by, “Which means that I don’t have to give good advice. In fact, right now I think I’m actively going against that.” She lifts the shot glass towards him, cheers-ing, and then throws it back in one clean move.

“By promoting alcohol poisoning I see,” he says wryly, eyes trained on her as she wipes the corner of her mouth with her thumb.

“I’m promoting _fun_ ,” she says, leaning close and jabbing him in the chest. “Something you know nothing about.”

Bellamy lifts a challenging brow. “Is that so? Oh I can guarantee that I know how to have fun, princess.”

“Oh yeah?” She’s still in his space, looking at the million freckles staring back at her and the scar on his lip that’s just begging to meet her acquaintance. Clarke rocks forward on her heels, her nose almost brushing against his, “Then prove it.”

His grin is downright wicked and he takes advantage of the fact that he’s still holding on to her hand to pull her forward. She’s not expecting it and squeaks as she stumbles against his chest.

With his free hand Bellamy cups her jaw and tilts her head up, thumb grazing the arch of her cheekbone. Her lips part on their own volition and she swears she stops breathing in that moment.

“Your wish is my command princess,” he murmurs, touching her cheek once more before stepping away, leaving her flushed and strangely cold.

Despite his earlier griping, Bellamy is actually a decent dancer. He manages to keep up with the rest of them, joking around and dodging Monty’s flailing limbs. He sticks close to her though, at her side, not exactly in her space but lingering right there at the edge of it, a constant presence. She can feel the flush on her skin whenever she looks at him, the twisted mess of feelings that she keeps firmly buried deep down within her rearing its stupid head once more.

One song flows into two then three and despite his earlier claims, Bellamy makes no move to leave. On more than one occasion she catches him looking at her but instead of pretending otherwise, he just grins at her. One time he even grabs her hand and spins her around, much to the enjoyment of everyone around them. 

The music changes slowly, going from bubblegum pop to something darker and more sultry. The bass thrums in time with her heart, loosening her limbs, and before she realises it, her back is pressed against Bellamy’s chest and his hands find their way to grasp at her hips. 

She sways against him, trying her best to move in time with the music but probably failing miserably at it. Besides, Clarke’s more focused on _Bellamy_ than whatever song is playing right now. She finds herself being all consumed by him-- his touch, his smell, his heat. They’re out of sight from the rest of their friends, having slowly been backing up towards the wall this whole time and she’s suddenly grateful for it. This moment feels too delicate to have onlookers ready to comment and make sly remarks. It’s a precipice, a crossroads in their already glass spun relationship.

Clarke gives a tentative twist of her hips, pressing back against him, and she feels the way his fingers spasm on her hips.

“We should probably stop,” says Bellamy. She can feel the way his voice rumbles in her chest, the vibrations pressed against her back, and she shivers as memories come rushing back to her.

He always liked to be close to her-- holding her hand while they walked, sitting with his arm around her shoulders, having his leg pressed against hers. But the closeness that Clarke liked the most was when he was just like this. She liked having his broad frame pressed against her body, reminding her just how small she is in his arms. She liked falling asleep with him wrapped around her and walking up pressed close together. 

And more than anything she liked when he fucked her like this. Back to his chest, balanced on all fours while he was leaning over her whispering all sorts of dirty promises in her ear.

A flush rises to her cheeks just think about it and she finds herself biting her bottom lip as she looks back at him.

Clarke tosses her hair over a shoulder. “That’s funny. I don’t remember you ever being afraid of playing with fire,” she says, pitching her voice low.

There’s a flicker of something in his eyes as he seizes onto her challenge, and heat, pure heat that turns her insides to mush.

“I don’t _play with fire_ , princess,” he says, voice pitched low as his breath ghosts across the sensitive skin of her neck. The hands on her hips tighten and he pulls her close so that the hard planes of his body are pressed against her back and her breath catches.

He leans in even closer, lips brushing the outer shell of her ear, “I _control_ it.”

As far as lines go it’s disgustingly cheesy but it doesn’t stop the pit of heat in her stomach from soaring to even higher temperatures.

She holds his gaze for a beat longer. “I’d like to see you try,” she says before facing front and starting to dance again.

Clarke doesn’t claim to be the best dancer in the world. She’s not like Raven who’s lithe and toned and able to do things with her body that she can only dream of, or like Harper, who’s athleticism lends her a flexibility that she wishes she could have. But she’s been to her fair share of frat parties and nightclubs which means she knows how to twist and sway her hips in time to the music, just like this.

Bellamy has no problems following her lead either, keeping his hands on her waist as she moves. They keep going like this, a dangerous game of chicken to see just how far the other one is willing to take it. Clarke dances on him, he follows suit. She grinds her ass against his hips, his thumbs press into her dimples of Venus to make her breath hitch.

His head is still bent close to hers and if she strains her ears she can hear the sound of his breathing underneath the heavy bass. 

She finds herself tilting her head to the other side, exposing the column of her neck to him, and after a moment of hesitation, Bellamy lowers his head, kissing her tentatively there. 

The touch of his lips to her skin causes her to inhale her breath sharply and that’s all the reaction he needs before he’s kissing her neck properly, his mouth hot on her skin as it trails over her pulse.

She remembers the first time she went to a bar with them all those months ago, when she saw Bellamy and some girl in the hallway to the bathrooms making out. He had her pinned to the wall as he kissed down the column of her throat and Clarke can feel the way her cunt throbs just thinking about it. 

It would be so easy for that girl to be her.

They could sneak off to the bathrooms together. She could feel him around her like that, hand around her neck while he sucks on her tits, the way his lips would curl into a cocky smirk when he realises just how wet and desperate she is for him.

It’s that thought that causes her to turn around and face him. His pupils are blown wide with desire, lips parted slightly as he breathes deep and Clarke’s pretty certain that she looks the same way. 

His eyes flick down, looking at her mouth for a brief second and _oh_.

Clarke licks her lips and takes half a step forward. They’re already so close together, chest to chest, barely any space to breathe.

Slowly she links her hands around his neck, fingers tangling themselves in his hair. They catch on a knot there and the shot of pain causes his eyes to flutter, his hands teasingly close to the curve of her ass.

His lips are right there in front of her, so close and fuck, Clarke wants to taste him, wants to lick inside of his mouth and make him groan out her name.

It would be so easy… It _is_ so easy for her to just roll up on her toes and lean in and capture his--

Bellamy turns his head at the last second and her lips land on his cheek.

She pulls back almost immediately, her heart lodged in her throat.

“You’re drunk,” he says, sounding absolutely disgusted with himself.

Her face is flaming as she drops back down to her normal height. “So?” she asks, looking at a spot over his shoulder to avoid having to look at his face.

“So we shouldn’t be doing this.” He takes a step away from her, leaving her cold and incredibly embarrassed.

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means lots of things,” he says, a muscle jumping in his jaw. Bellamy glances at his watch. “It’s after midnight, I’m ready to go home.”

“I’ll come with you then,” she says, quick. “You did offer after all.”

His jaw clenches even further and he finds himself looking away from her before nodding tersely. “Fine. Go drink some water. I’ll tell Raven that we’re going.”

“Fine.”

She tries her best not to stumble _too_ much as she walks away with what little self respect she has left.

Clarke takes her time getting a bottle of water from the bar and grabbing her things, dithering until her pulse is back to normal and her skin isn’t quite as red. She still is drunk however, the alcohol humming along happily in her veins, and she still finds herself fairly uncoordinated as she meets back up with Bellamy near the entrance after she’s said her goodbyes.

She still can’t look him in the eye and it seems neither can he.

Bellamy clears his throat. “All ready?”

She nods. “Yes.”

Monty and Miller elected to leave with them which means it’s not as awkward as it could have been. She and Monty are by far the drunker of the two and they end up linking arms while Miller tries to urge them in the correct direction of the car park. Meanwhile Bellamy walks ahead of them, straight backed and tense.

She and Monty scramble into the backseat whileMiller takes the front and Bellamy starts the car.

They’re all quiet for a moment as he backs out of the parking space and then,

“Can we get McDonalds?” asks Monty, leaning forwards between the two front seats. “I’m hungry.”

“I’m hungry too,” she pipes up.

“See, the birthday girl is hungry too,” he says, “That means we have to go. It the law.”

“Yeah Bellamy, it’s the law,” Miller snickers and Bellamy just sighs and changes lanes, taking them to the nearest drive-thru.

Fifteen minutes later they’re back on the road, having a veritable feast of fast food laid out amongst them. 

“If you get any ketchup on my seats I’m killing you,” Bellamy says darkly.

Monty just clumsily pats him on the top of his head before shoving an entire chicken nugget into his mouth. The exasperated expression reflected on the rearview mirror is absolutely to die for which almost happens to Clarke as she chokes on the coke that she was sucking down.

It’s almost one in the morning which means there’s no traffic. They drop off Miller first at his boyfriend’s house and then Monty stumbles out after, two blocks later.

She’s the last one left in Bellamy’s jeep and she can feel that tension between them, so thick that it’s almost stifling. She’s almost glad that she elected on taking the backseat with Monty as she nibbles on a now cold french fry.

The greasy fast food has helped soak up some of the alcohol and clearing the mist that fogged up her mind and god she wants to curl up in a ball and _die_.

Clarke can’t believe that she almost made out with her _ex boyfriend_.

She buries her face in her hands and groans, cursing herself to high heaven.

“If you’re going to throw up, do it in one of the bags,” says Bellamy, cutting into her self loathing spiel.

Her cheeks warm. “I’m not going to throw up,” she mumbles, sinking into the backseat. The false lashes that Raven strongarmed her into wearing earlier started to irritate her midway through the ride home so Clarke ripped them off and stuck it on the back of his headrest. She found herself staring at it now.

The silence is awkward between them as he drives her home and it stays that way until he’s pulling into her street. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, glancing at her in the mirror.

“Fine,” she lies.

“Don’t seem fine.”

She runs a hand through what was once pretty blowout curls but now is just a tangled mess. “I’m reflecting on my poor choices. Drunken regret.”

“Aren’t you supposed to do that the next morning?”

“Yeah, well, I’ve always been ahead of the curve,” she mutters bitterly before adding a bit louder, “I’m sorry. For what happened… earlier.”

She speaks around the incident-- the dancing, the flirting, the almost kiss-- too scared to actually pin it down properly.

Bellamy clears his throat. “It’s fine. These things happen.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

He pulls into a visitor’s park outside of her apartment complex and she hears the creak of the handbrake as he puts the jeep in park. “Are you uh, okay now?”

“I’m less drunk, if that’s what you mean,” she says wryly.

It gets a soft laugh out of him, one that helps to ease the tension between them. “That’s good to hear. You were definitely one drink away from keeling over.”

“I’ll have you know that my tolerance is top notch,” she sniffs.

He laughs again. “Alright, if you say so.” He has turned around in his seat to look at her, a small smile on his face. His skin looks even more golden in the yellow light of the car and it throws the lines of his profile into sharp relief, accentuating his strong features.

Not for the first time Clarke itches to sketch him. She used to spend hours doing that while they were together. He was always her most beautiful subject. Still is if she’s being honest with herself.

His smile fades a little at the corners and a shadow crosses his face so quickly that she thinks she might have imagined it.

Bellamy clears his throat again. “Come on,” he says, cutting the engine. “I’ll walk you up.”

“I’m a big girl,” she tells him, gathering her purse and jacket and the trash leftover in the backseat, “I can get in by myself. You don’t have to.”

“I know, but I want to,” he says, before tacking on a few seconds later, “Besides, don’t want drunken you to fall down the stairs now do we.”

“Not drunk anymore,” she shoots back at him, hopping out of the car. “I can walk a perfectly straight line. Watch.”

She demonstrates for him right there in the carpark, walking heel to toes along the chipped and faded white lines, and only stumbles _once_. He throws his head back and laughs loudly, having it echo off the cars and the walls that surround them.

“Alright, alright,” he says, grabbing hold of her arm and lugging her off in the direction of the main door. “You’ve made your point, you absolute mad woman.”

“Proving you wrong is my favourite pastime,” she tells him and Bellamy ducks his head, grinning.

“I’ve realised.”

Clarke lives on the fifth floor of her complex and the elevator is down for maintenance this week which means they have to take the stairs. It’s a long and gruelling process because the more sober she gets, the more discomfort she realises she’s in. Her shoes are killing her feet, her makeup feels disgusting, she’s sweaty and this dress has started to chafe under her arms.

By the time they get to the fifth floor Clarke feels like she’s about to _die_.

Bellamy on the other hand is fine. Because he’s an asshole, clearly.

“This is me,” she says when they finally get to the front of her apartment, not knowing what else to say.

A part of her is glad that she’s home and could forget everything that’s happened tonight but another part of her, a smaller, more annoying part of her is sad that it’s finally coming to an end. That in a few minutes he’ll be leaving and she’ll be all alone once more.

“Right,” says Bellamy, a bit absentmindedly.

She’s certain she’s not imagining the way he’s staring at her mouth, hot and intense, and Clarke represses a shiver. She bites her lower lip, looking at him, daring him to do something about it.

She _wants_ him to do something about it.

It’s been just over an hour since the incident in the club but she still wants him, wants this. A sense of déjà vu sweeps over her.

She wants him to push her up against her front door, big hand cupping her jaws he hauls her up to kiss him all deep and wet and _filthy_. It’s even worse because Clarke knows exactly what it feels like to be kissed by Bellamy. To be manhandled and roughed up and whining in his mouth.

But he’s much too gentlemanly as he’s made clear tonight and she’s far too cowardly after everything that’s happened to do anything about the obvious tension still lingering in the air. So they’re left at a stalemate.

Bellamy brushes a wayward curl from her face, the rough pad of his thumb grazing her cheek as he tucks it behind her ear. 

“Happy birthday, Clarke,” he murmurs, holding her gaze as he leans in close.

He presses a kiss to her cheek, right near to the corner of her mouth and she swears that she stops breathing for a moment.

His lips linger for a moment before he eventually pulls away. “Have a goodnight,” he says, pushing his hands in his pockets.

She swallows drily. “Yeah, you too,” she replies, her voice wavering only a little bit and she prays that he doesn’t notice.

Bellamy watches as she unlocks her door and slips inside, giving him an awkward wave-- one that he returns-- before letting it fall shut.

She doesn’t go very far, sagging down against the door as she exhales shakily, her insides turned to goo from his actions just now. 

Clarke runs a hand through her already tangled hair and lets her head drop back against the door with a dull ‘thump’ as she comes to the unfortunate realisation that she still has the hots for her ex boyfriend.

She’s so _fucked_.

And not even the way she wants to be.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT STOP POUND TOWN.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The days following that night at the club are simultaneously the most frustrating and most awkward days of Clarke’s life. Mortification has fully set in at this point, both at the fact that she propositioned her ex and then masturbated to the thought of him. Twice. 
> 
> It’s like a switch has been flipped between her and Bellamy and Clarke’s not sure how much longer she can take it. 
> 
> So she wants to fuck her ex boyfriend and now coworker.
> 
> It’s fine. Everything is fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're at an E rating now folks

It doesn’t come as a surprise to Clarke that her subconscious is hellbent on reminding her of what she’s come to dub as the _incident._

Over the course of the next two days she finds every spare moment, every wayward thought and every random memory to be of Bellamy. She finds herself thinking about him: the smell of his cologne, the feel of his hands on her waist, the deep rumble of his voice. She thinks about the almost kiss, the kiss that would have happened if Bellamy wasn’t such a fucking gentleman.

 _Or if he still had some sort of interest in you_ , that annoying voice in the back of her mind snidely pointed out.

She elects to ignore it.

And it doesn’t help that Clarke _knows_ what it’s like to kiss Bellamy. Clarke knows what it’s like to do _a lot_ of things with Bellamy, something her hippocampus has been intent on reminding her off for the past two days.

Of course, that’s not the worst part.

No, the worst part would be the dreams.

The dreams that taunt her with what she could have and what she once had.

She dreams of wandering hands and warm mouths. Sinful caresses and languid kisses. The past intertwining with the present and leaving her wanting and desperate for more, spending the next few days in a lust fuelled haze. Each night brings with it a different scenario but the same ending nonetheless: Clarke waking up panting, hair sticking to her forehead and slick pooling in her underwear.

She dreams of them on the dancefloor, just like they were in reality, her back to his chest, the closeness and the heat around them except this time he has his hands in her underwear, two fingers buried deep in her cunt. She dreams of him joining her in the apartment, heavy hands on her breasts and teeth scratching at her nipples. She dreams of them sneaking down that dark hallway in the club, him pinning her to the wall and throwing a leg over his shoulder before spreading her wide and licking in.

The days following that night at the club are simultaneously the most frustrating and most awkward days of Clarke’s life. Mortification has fully set in at this point, both at the fact that she _propositioned her ex_ and then masturbated to the thought of him. _Twice._

It’s like a switch has been flipped between her and Bellamy and Clarke’s not sure how much longer she can take it. 

So she wants to fuck her ex boyfriend and now coworker.

It’s fine. Everything is _fine_.

She takes the bus to work the next morning instead of the train just so she’d avoid the risk of reaching early and being alone with Bellamy. She needs at least a three person buffer between them for the upcoming days. Or maybe weeks. However long it takes for her to get over him and this stupid little infatuation.

Just as she’d hoped, when Clarke walks into the station that morning, most of their team is already there. Harper and Raven stand in the kitchen, talking easily to one another while they make breakfast, Gabriel is by the table doing a crossword, and Monty sits scrolling through his phone by the counter.

Bellamy is there too, pouring a fresh pot of coffee into the mugs he has lined up next to him and she tries her best to ignore his existence, even as her cheeks burn red.

She murmurs a soft ‘good morning’ as she walks in and immediately slumps into the chair next to Monty, as far away from Bellamy as she can be.

It occurs to her that they’ve come full circle, with Clarke trying her best to stay out of Bellamy’s way as much as possible, just like she did for that first month at the station. Except this time she’s avoiding him for completely different reasons.

It’s a poetic sort of irony, she has to admit.

“Had a good weekend?” Monty asks as she settles herself.

She makes a noncommittal sound. “Other than the nasty hangover courtesy of you lot, it was fine,” she teases him.

He snorts. “Hey, don’t try and pin it on us,” he says, “I remember someone grabbing a bottle of champagne and screaming, ‘it’s my motherfucking birthday’ out loud for the entire club to hear.”

“I have no recollection of that moment therefore I’m going to choose to believe that that is a lie in an effort to drag my good name through the mud,” she sniffs, fighting back a smile, and Monty grins even while rolling his eyes.

“You might as well believe it, princess,” a voice says from above her, making her jump. Clarke looks up only to find Bellamy staring bemusedly down at her.

The flush that she had only just gotten under control appears once more in full force and she immediately drops her gaze, finding it hard to stare at him for too long.

He passes a mug over to her, coffee made just how she likes it, and grins. Her heart does something stupid in her chest. “I’m pretty sure there’s photographic evidence,” he continues, completely unaware of Clarke’s crisis right now, “Maybe even video. In fact, Monroe has probably already printed it to stick onto the wall by now.”

 _I got myself off this morning thinking of you_ , she almost blurts out, her mind unable to function. 

This is it. This is what breaks her. A crush turned boyfriend turned ex turned coworker with a grudge to strange friends and now _this_. These thoughts. She can’t handle it. Her brain is not equipped to deal with this kind of fucked up scenario.

But despite her brain calling it quits, Clarke has been trained in the art of faking it her whole life, which is why she finds it somewhat easy to paste a smile on her face and eke out a breath of laughter. “Guess I’ll have to check it out later,” she says, easy breezy, and then takes a sip of her coffee to avoid saying anything else.

Bellamy’s brows furrow for a half a second, a blink and you’ll miss it expression as he looks at her and it makes her even more nervous. He’s always been uncannily good at seeing through her facades.

But then it’s gone just as quick as it arrived, and he’s grinning once more. “Truly is a sight to behold,” he tells her, “A piece of modern renaissance art.”

Besides her, Monty snorts again. “Laying it on a bit thick there, huh Blake,” he titters slyly and Clarke aims a kick at his shins.

Bellamy at least finds it funny. “Someone has to. We all know that when she sees the picture she’s going to unleash hell.”

“Is it really that bad?”

The grin doesn’t budge. “You’ll just have to see for yourself,” he says before rapping the counter with his knuckles and going off to presumably annoy someone else.

Clarke exhales shakily and drinks her coffee, ignoring the weight of Monty’s stare on the side of her head.

“You’re blushing,” he says mildly.

“It’s cold,” she snaps before grabbing her things and moving to sit over by Gabriel who’s mercifully quiet unlike her partner, who sat on his stool cackling.

(She does manage to get a look at the photo wall a bit later, in between calls. He was right, there is a certain renaissance feel to it with the jewel tones and moderated chaos. Her birthday sash was at risk of sliding off her shoulder and her crown was crooked as she drank straight from the bottle of champagne. It’s a good picture though, and Clarke finds herself snapping a picture of it with her phone to add to her memories.)

(In the background of it sat Bellamy, a bit blurry and out of focus as he looks up at her, almost fond, and she doesn’t dwell on what his expression could possibly mean.)

* * *

It’s been a week since _the incident_ and Clarke still can’t get him out of her mind.

Part of the reason is because she sees Bellamy all the time and the slightest of things serve as a reminder, and the other part of it is because he _hasn’t said a single word to her about that night_.

To be clear, she doesn’t actively _want_ him to talk about that night with her. Clarke thinks that she may actually die of mortification if he did, but by not talking about it she feels as though the topic-- the _incident_ \-- looms over them like a storm cloud.

It’s a conundrum to say the least.

She’s oddly conscious of every single one of her interactions with Bellamy which means that she’s been _avoiding_ Bellamy.

Whenever there’s even the slightest chance of them interacting, Clarke always has something else to do. She can’t even begin to count how many times she’s repacked the ambo or taken inventory. If there’s one thing, no one can say that firehouse 47’s record keeping isn’t top notch. She’s single handedly made sure of that.

He catches on pretty quickly which, it’s not like she was being _subtle_.

“Did I do something?” he asks one night after their shifts are over and she jumps, a small sound of surprise escaping her. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says, reflex, even as her heart thuds in her chest. Clarke thought she was alone in the dormitory while she rifled through her bag for her socks and didn’t hear him come in.

“Right,” he says, running a hand through his hair. She watches as it musses up his curls even further. “So did I?”

“Did you what?”

“I don’t know.” A trickle of agitation leaks into his voice and she watches as he shoves his hands in his pockets in an effort not to fidget. Bellamy never liked to keep still. He was always moving or doing something with his hands, even more so when experiencing a particularly strong emotion. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Clarke frowns. “I don’t follow.”

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says bluntly, and for the slightest moment she freezes, her keys digging into her palm as she clenches her hand around them.

“I’m not,” she says, doing her best to keep her voice even, “I’ve just been busy.”

“You darted out of the kitchen earlier today when I came in to go ‘sterilise equipment’,” he snorts, “You weren’t even finished with your lunch.”

Her cheeks burn at the memory. She _did_ leave lunch early when he came in because it was just her and Monty at the table and Bellamy would have undoubtedly joined them.

“It needed to be clean.”

“It could have waited until after you were done eating.”

“Aren’t you the one who’s always preaching about ‘expect the unexpected’ and be ready to get called out at a moment’s notice?”

“ _Clarke_.”

She releases a shaky breath and finally turns to look at him. “Okay, fine, maybe I’ve been avoiding you a little bit,” she finally admits after seeing no way out of this conversation. He’d backed her into a corner and wasn’t going to leave until he got what he wanted.

“I knew it.”

“But it’s not because of you,” she continues, biting her lip. “It’s because of me.”

Half truths are her best bet for this, things that aren’t really a lie but also not the entire truth. If she lied, Bellamy would be able to see right through her and would end up being ten times worse. But if she told the truth, well… Clarke would rather set herself on fire than even entertain the thought.

“Last week I got sort of drunk and well…” she trails off wincing, “It was embarrassing I guess.”

“You’re avoiding me because I saw you _drunk?_ ” he asks incredulously.

Not exactly, but she certainly isn’t going to tell him that it’s because she’s been fantasising about him since then. That would be inappropriate.

So Clarke nods and he just snorts. “You’re ridiculous Griffin.”

She manages a weak smile. “So I’ve been told.”

“Honestly, if it helps, you’re not nearly the worst drunk we’ve had. Miller got so wasted this one time that he threw up on my shoes,” he tells her, and she huffs out a laugh for his benefit.

“Good to know,” she says and he just grins at her in return.

“And besides, it wasn’t _all_ that bad,” he says and Clarke would swear that if it wasn’t dark and she squinted just a bit harder, she’d be able to make out the smug expression on his face, almost teasing in a way. “I considered the evening quite… illuminating.”

There are a million things she wants to ask him now, not to mention the small part of her that insists that this is him making reference to the _incident_ , but before she could even process any of that he clears his throat and asks, “Do you need a ride home?”

The sudden change in topic is giving her whiplash.

“Nah it’s fine, I can take the train,” she manages, shaking her head. Things might be mending between them, at least on her side, but she doesn’t think she’s ready to be alone in an enclosed space with him just yet.

“You sure?” he presses, brows furrowing with concern, “It’s late.”

A rush of emotion that she refuses to put a name to goes through her and she ends up ducking her head to hide her smile. “Yeah I’m sure. I do it all the time.”

“If you say so,” he allows grudgingly. He’s _such_ a caregiver, a big brother through and through. “Let me know when you get home, okay?”

She rolls her eyes, more of a show than anything really. “Yes dad.”

Bellamy scoffs and mutters something under his breath that she doesn’t quite catch. He stays with her until she puts on her boots and hands her her coat as they walk out the dormitory together, his arm brushing against hers.

Clarke thinks that he’s just going to walk her out of the building but to her surprise-- or not if she really thinks about it-- he insists on accompanying her all the way to the station. It’s just a five minute walk from the fire station but she has to admit that it’s nice having company. She usually walks with Harper and Monroe but today Clarke stayed behind to finish up a report and told them to go on without her.

It’s nice having _Bellamy_ with her.

Idle chit chat is passed back and forth between them as they walk, simple things like the weather and a dog he saw on his run this morning. Clarke is still wary of spending time with him, all of her dreams and memories and thoughts lingering at the forefront of her mind, but the conversation serves as a nice distraction from it all.

Their hands brush against each other a couple times as they walk and she ends up thinking, just for a brief moment, about _before_. 

He always used to insist on walking her back to her apartment, their interwoven fingers swinging between their bodies. His hand was rough and warm, absolutely swallowing hers.

Thanks to him, Clarke definitely knows a thing or two about guys with big hands.

Shit, she shouldn’t be thinking about _that_.

Her cheeks warm and she finds herself focusing on Bellamy’s story, nodding emphatically when he tells her about a hike gone wrong.

They eventually get to the station and he turns to look at her and she swears she’s not imagining the want that lingers behind his gaze, just like it did when he dropped her home last week, and her breath catches.

For one thrilling moment she thinks he’s going to do something right there in the middle of the half empty train station that reeks of cigarette smoke and urine.

But instead Bellamy just rocks back on his heels and shoves his hands in his pockets and says, “Have a goodnight, princess.”

“Yeah, you too,” she mumbles, hoping that her face isn’t as pink as she thinks it might be.

Bellamy gives her a mocking salute before stalking off and she watches as he leaves, so focused on his retreating figure that she almost misses her train.

Things get a bit easier after that night.

Clarke still finds her thoughts being consumed by him but it’s easier to ignore it now, to look at him and pretend that she wasn’t dreaming about his head between her thighs mere hours ago.

There’s also this newfound undercurrent of tension between them, not bad per say, but different. She feels it most in their conversations which have become borderline banter and throwaway smiles that make her feel as though there’s something trapped in her stomach aching to get out.

“You two are nauseating,” she says, dropping into the newly vacated chair next to Clarke. She and Bellamy were bickering about pizza toppings and he’d only left a minute before when Pike called him into his office.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, doing her best not to flush under the other girl’s scrutinising gaze.

“Keep telling yourself that,” she snorts before stealing her half eaten pack of M&Ms and sauntering off to do god knows what. Probably try and mess with the siren on the truck.

Bellamy comes back a few moments later while Clarke is aimlessly scrolling through her phone. Facebook this time, which she only chooses to do when she’s desperate. Thankfully it’s just a list of engagement posts and wedding photos and pregnancy announcements from her former classmates instead of the usual vitriol and conspiracy theories.

He flicks the furrow between her brows as he sits back down. “What?”

“Nothing.” She backhands his bicep in retaliation.

“Try again, princess.”

She pulls a face at him and he just lifts an eyebrow in response.

“Just, you know, skimming through social media and seeing what people are doing with their lives,” she says, showing him the neverending stream of congratulatory posts. “Seems like everyone is either married, about to get married, or have a kid which is, you know. Terrifying.”

Bellamy chuckles. “You’re twenty seven. I’m pretty sure this is normal for most twenty seven year olds.”

“Still terrifying. I mean, it still feels as though we’re kids and that guy is blowing spitballs at me. And now he has a _baby_.”

“That’s life,” he says, fiddling with the cap on his water bottle. “You grow up. Get married. Produce offspring.”

“You say that as if you aren’t the most _dad_ person we all know,” she says and his eyebrows shoot up, face amused, and Clarke only just realises the double meaning to her words. “Shut up,” she tells him even as her face burns scarlet.

“I didn’t even say anything!”

“What I meant was that you just give off big dad energy. You’re like, captain of the dads,” she says, trying to clarify and just making things worse. His shoulders shake with the force of his withheld laugh and she kicks him in the hsins. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Blake.”

“Again, this conversation was all you, princess.”

She sticks her tongue out at him and he just grins in a way that makes her toes curl.

Her eyes fall back on her phone, the post innocently still looking back up at her.

It’s not like-- Clarke’s parents got married when they were her age. They had her just a few years later. Back then, as a kid, it had seemed so adult, so grown up, and her parents had felt _ancient_ especially when she learnt some kids had younger moms and dads. But now Clarke feels lost, torn between young and old, the concept of marriage so foreign to her that she can’t even begin to wrap her head around the thought of actually going through with it at this age.

Her eyes drift back to Bellamy, still grinning at her with his eyes crinkling at the corners and hair windswept and wild, and for one electrifying moment she lets herself think about what could have been.

A tiny apartment together, maybe a house after a year or two. Maybe he would have stuck with his classes and gone on to do something else, like a teacher perhaps, or maybe they were always meant to be here, together. They’d have a dog, a big rescue pup that he’d take on his morning runs and then maybe a few years later, a baby, a little girl with his hair and his eyes and her smile--

Clarke inhales sharply and yanks herself out of the daydream, back to present.

She glances back at him and Bellamy is still looking at her, the sharpness of his mirth softening into something else. She realises how close they’re sitting, his leg pressed against hers and just how easy it would be to lean up.

She wets her lips and a thrill goes through her when she sees the way his eyes drop to her mouth.

It’s only for a second though and then he’s shifting in his seat, glancing away from her and just like that the moment is over.

Bellamy clears his throat. “So Pike wants me to start planning some new fire training scenarios. Got any suggestions?”

It’s not a subtle segue but Clarke is grateful for it nonetheless, and prompts him into explaining. Turns out that Bellamy doesn’t need much prompting and he already has a list of new training exercises to add into their usual rotation that he pulls up on his phone for her to see.

It’s kind of adorable really, the way his face lights up and the animated hand gestures.

She only stops him when he jokes about _Clarke_ joining in on the drills a time and she’s already shaking her head before he could finish the sentence.

“I’m good, thanks,” she tells him, cringing at the mere thought of having to scale the rig with the heavy fire hose slung across her shoulders. “They seem too chaotic for me.”

His lips tip up in a smirk. “Aw, come on princess, what’s wrong with a little chaos?”

She pins him in place with a glare. “You can talk to me about running _fire_ drills with you after you buck up on your EMS training. I’ve seen you practicing CPR, your form is abysmal.”

Bellamy huffs. “It’s not that bad.”

“You were practically pumping the dummy’s stomach.”

“It’s because my hands are too big,” he grumbles.

Oh, she knows. Her eyes flick down to his hands resting on the table and then back up to his face before he can notice.

Subtly clearing her throat, she says, “That’s not an excuse. Try harder.”

He quirks a brow. “You gonna take point on our next training session?” he teases, his voice dipping an octave lower as he leans towards her, just a little bit.

“You know what, maybe I should,” she says, lifting her chin in acceptance of his challenge and looking him in the eye. “Someone needs to hold you all accountable.”

“I just think you want an excuse to yell at us.”

“I don’t need an _excuse_.”

“Alright fine, maybe you just want to boss us around.”

“As if you’d have a problem with that.”

It slips out, easy as nothing, and she immediately goes bright red, freezing in place. Bellamy for his part doesn’t seem quite as scandalised as she is which is. Good. Clarke blames that gaffe on the fact that he’s constantly on her mind, memories of their past always present. 

He licks his lips, eyes going dark and fuck, that is _not_ helping her current situation at all. It’s the same look he used to give her before he would grab her by the neck and seal his mouth over hers.

He holds her gaze, even as he says, “You know I would,” and then gets up to _leave_ before Clarke even has the time to process any of that.

(She does agree to lead the next EMT session they have-- the one a week and a half after that conversation-- and it certainly was an experience lecturing them about proper rate and rhythm and posture while Bellamy was on his knees by the dummy, staring up at her all hot and dark and making her skin feel too tight for her body.)

* * *

It goes like that for the next few weeks, the usual mix of training sessions and emergency calls. The cold is finally here to stay and Clarke decidedly hates it.

To say she’s not fond of winter is an understatement.

She’s lived her whole life in places that experience snow and yet, every time the seasons change from the manageable, cool fall weather to the brutal winter cold, her mood always ends up plummeting with the temperature.

“I just don’t get what’s so fun about it,” she complains to Monty, absolutely miserable as they sit outside the station while the others run drills. She has on _layers_ , a shirt beneath her uniform _and_ a coat on top of it and yet she’s still freezing.

“Come on, you have to admit that snow is kind of nice,” he says as the two of them run through practice patient scenarios.

“It’s pretty for like an hour and then it’s a walking death trap.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It can cause hypothermia and make driving conditions unsafe.”

“You’re just paranoid.”

“I’m realistic,” she sniffs.

His eye catches on something behind her and his entire face lights up. “Well maybe you should tell _Bellamy_ all about hypothermia,” he says, grinning wickedly as he looks over her shoulder at the man in question.

Or so she assumes. Clarke saw when Bellamy dragged his shirt off after completing the first couple of circuits, saw the way his pectorals and biceps flexed and moved, just begging for her to trace the contours of it with her hands and her tongue. It quickly became a problem and so she’s had her back turned towards him ever since. Honestly, who in their right mind can exercise shirtless in this weather. She can barely feel her fingertips and he’s supposedly fine half naked. Yeah right.

She feels the warmth rise to her cheeks and she glowers at Monty. “Shut up.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Well don’t.”

She pushes herself off the bench and stalks back inside to get more coffee all while Monty laughs at her retreating figure.

Clarke dawdles when she gets back inside, both to avoid heading back out in the cold and so she doesn’t have to deal with any more _comments_.

The coffee pot is empty and she maybe rinses it a bit too forcefully as she thinks about him.

Stupid Bellamy and his stupid muscled self.

She grabs the tub of Folders from the cupboard and adds a few scoops to the machine all the while seething. Seriously it’s like mid forties, who in their right mind exercises without a shirt?

She lets the lid drop back down in place and presses start before pulling her phone from her pocket for want of something to do while she waits for it to brew. She has more than enough mind numbing apps installed here and if all else fails, there’s always the internet. Surely something can manage to successfully distract her from Bellamy and his annoyingly perfect arms and toned stomach and the stupid vee of his hips that lead down to--

“You realise you’re in front of the fridge, right princess?”

Clarke jumps and almost drops her phone.

“What the _fuck_.”

For half a moment she swears that she’s going crazy and hallucinating but no, that is in fact Bellamy Blake standing in front of her and smirking.

Her eyes drift drown, past his neck, and she finds herself swallowing, throat suddenly dry.

God, it’s even worse up close in person.

“You scared me,” she says, closing her eyes and tipping her head back for a quick second, just until she’s regained her composure. Her heart is still thundering in her chest when she cracks an eye open.

“You just don’t pay attention to your surroundings,” he teases, stepping into her space so he can reach around her to get to the fridge. He smells like sweat and fucking Old Spice deodorant and she ends up biting her lip.

“I pay attention. I just didn’t expect anyone to come in here,” she shoots back at him, “You all are supposed to be running drills.”

He grabs his water bottle from the fridge. “Water break,” he says before flicking the cap off and guzzling down at least half of it in one go. “Forgot mine in here.”

“Sure you did,” she mutters to herself, turning away to stare at the slow drip of the coffee machine.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

They lapse into comfortable silence, nothing both the steady _drip, drip, drip_ of her coffee and Bellamy’s breaths echoing in the space. She determinedly doesn’t look at him, the sweat glistening on his body, the way his hair is damp and curls even more across his forehead and over his ears.

Even when he finishes his water he stays, leaning against the adjacent counter and watching her. Clarke finds herself fidgeting, staring so hard at the coffee maker that she’s surprised it doesn’t immediately burst into flames.

“ _What_ ,” she finally bursts and asks, turning around to look at him.

He looks confused. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were staring.”

“Well, you’re acting weird.”

“I’m not acting weird,” she grumbles, “Besides, shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, scaling the rig or doing push ups with the fire hose on your back or something?”

“I’m taking a break.”

“Couldn’t you take your break outside?”

He grins at her. “Am I bothering you, princess?” he asks, pushing himself off the counter. It only takes him four steps to cross the threshold of their tiny kitchen and then he’s there, standing right beside her.

She jerks her elbow back, aiming for his spleen. He catches it of course, his hand warm and rough against her skin, and the sudden scrape of his calluses causes something to go skittering down her spine. “You’re always bothering me.”

“Mmhmm, but something’s especially gotten under your skin,” he counters, trailing a finger across the back of her neck and she squeaks.

“Fuck off,” she snaps, her cheeks a mottled pink as she reaches for a clean mug. “Go harass someone else

“But where’s the fun in that,” he says, “No one else is as quite… _receptive_ as you are.”

“You mean they don’t put up with your bullshit like I do,” she grumps petulantly, thinking of all the times she’s heard Raven threaten-- very graphically-- to do some serious bodily harm to him if he doesn’t quit hovering over her shoulder as she works on the truck.

He shrugs, still grinning. “Tomato, _tomato_.”

The machine clicks off and Clarke reaches for the pot like a lifeline. Bellamy passes her the cream and sugar and she doesn’t even say thank you, just to be a brat.

She’s stirring it all in when she realises that he still hasn’t left.

“Why are you still here?” she asks.

“I’m waiting on you.”

“I don’t need you to wait on me,” she says with a roll of her eyes, “Besides, I’m staying in here. Where it’s warm.”

“It’s not that cold outside,” he says, shrugging.

She casts a critical eye towards him. “I don’t trust your judgement. You’re the psychopath exercising half dressed.”

His eyes light up. “Is that bothering you, princess?” he asks slyly and she forces herself to keep her composure.

“No.”

“Really.”

“Fine. Yes, because when you get frostbite I’m the one who’s going to have to take care of you,” she grits out, turning back around to pack her things back in the cupboard.

Bellamy sidles up behind her, caging her in with his body and she swears as she almost drops the pot of sugar.

“You worried about me, Clarke?” he asks, so close that his breath ruffles the fine hair around her head. His hands rest easy on the counter in front of her, loose and relaxed, giving her ample opportunity to escape if she felt like it.

“I always worry about you. All of you,” she says, somehow managing to keep her voice even. Her hands curl into fists on the counter besides his own hands, her skin looking paler than usual when placed next to his.

He hums noncommittal and shuffles just a bit closer. She can feel the heat radiating from his chest against her back. “I don’t think you’re worried though,” he says, casual, easy, as though he isn’t pressed up against her body in their communal work kitchen. “I think you are distracted.”

She lets out a shuddering breath when he rests a hand on top of hers and forces her to loosen her grip on the spoon. “Distracted by what,” she manages to say, her voice only wobbling a little bit.

“You know what.” 

“I really don’t.”

There’s the soft pressure of his chin on her shoulder, the light sting of stubble when his cheek brushes her ear. “No? Because I’m pretty sure you were looking at me like you were ready to have your way with me right then and there on the practice field,” he murmurs, “Not to mention all the times before. You’ve wanted this for _weeks_.”

And shit, Clarke knows that she’s been caught but she honestly can’t find it in herself to care about that right now, not when his words linger in the air and send a hot bolt of heat straight to her core.

“I…”

“You’re not really sneaky, princess,” he chuckles. He doesn’t do anything further, doesn’t pin her body to the counter with his so she can’t escape or press a kiss to her neck like she’s longing for.

God, she really wants him to.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asks, biting her lip to stop from arching against him.

His thumb sweeps across her knuckles. “Do about it?” he asks. “You want me to do something about it?”

She hesitates for a minute. “Maybe.”

There’s a sharp inhale from behind her and for a second she thinks that this is it, this is the culmination of everything: that night from her birthday, the dreams, their past. It all comes to head here.

And then the shrill sound of a whistle pierces the air causing them both to jump.

Bellamy pulls away and immediately she misses the heat of his body.

“Practice is starting back” he murmurs as he runs a hand through his already messy hair. “We’ll pick this conversation up again another time, princess.”

He leaves before she can say anything else, hurrying out of the kitchen, and then Clarke is left alone with a cup of coffee that’s slowly going cold.

The next time they’re on shift together she’s terrified thinking that the moment in the kitchen has changed something irreversibly but Bellamy greets her as normal and gives absolutely no indication that anything had happened at all.

Honestly Clarke has half the mind to believe that she made up the entire scenario in her head but even in her wildest dreams she’s never been able to conjure up the smell of him or the heat of his body against hers or even the scritch of his beard.

But if Bellamy wants to pretend that nothing happened then Clarke is more than happy to follow his lead. Even if it means driving herself near insane by thinking about what he said.

So that’s what she does for the next few days, the two of them being unfailingly polite and exchanging carefully monitored banter. She goes back to avoiding being alone with him and this time he lets her.

About a week after that moment in the kitchen, they get a call in the middle of the night to attend to a fire in the downtown area. Clarke’s pretty sure that the address is one from the abandoned part of town, but she still grabs her things and hops in the ambulance while the rest of their team grabs their gear.

She’s proven right when they finally pull up in the outskirts of the city to find a massive blaze going. The police are already on the scene and have it cordoned off and she overhears one of the officers telling Pike that they suspect it’s the work of an arsonist.

The team gets to work immediately, setting up the fire hose and taking note of what they are dealing with. It’s an old building, abandoned for almost a decade or so, with a wooden structure. The last part Pike says with a frown and Clarke doesn’t have to be a firefighter to understand why. Wood is kindling and for a fire of this size, that’s going to be a problem.

The police tell them that there were no victims on the scene and Pike nods before instructing his team to take a defensive approach to handle the blaze.

There’s nothing that Clarke can do, not right now at least, and she finds herself sitting in the back of the ambo with Monty, safely out of the way of the crew but close enough that they can be there in seconds if needed.

Around them a small crowd has gathered behind the police tape and she shudders as she spots a few of the onlookers eyeing the ambulance carefully.

She nudges Monty’s shoulder. “You think we might have a problem?” she asks lowly, hinting with a quick jerk of her chin at a man who kept on staring at them. She’s heard the stories of course, junkies who’d do whatever they needed to get their next fix. While Clarke might have her qualms with how victims of drug abuse are treated, she is in no way ready to deal with someone who’s trying to strongarm some morphine out of her.

Monty follows her gaze and takes a moment to assess the situation. “Nah,” he says at last, “With all the police around? They wouldn’t even try.”

She nods, agreeing with him, and then adds, “I think I’ll tell Pike, just to be safe. And also see if he can get someone to clear the area.”

He just nods and Clarke slips out of the ambo, forgoing her coat because the searing heat from the blaze is making her sweat. She relays the information to Pike and he nods, getting one of the officers to push back the police line another thirty feet or so and stationed someone nearby to the ambulance.

She means to head back and continue to sit and wait with Monty but for some reason she ends up lingering nearby, watching as the team moves in seamless unison to tackle the fire. Roan and Gabriel take the farside and while Miller and Harper take the front with Murphy running interference between the two groups. The smoke is thick closer to the building and she has to squint to make out the reflective panelling of the name _Blake_ emblazoned on the back of his turn out jacket but he’s there.

Front and centre in the thick of the danger as always.

She swallows, watching him for a moment, the usual bout of fear and worry sitting heavy in her stomach.

Clarke doubts that she’ll ever get over those feelings.

For all of them, but especially Bellamy. She knows that this is their job but it does little to quell the nervousness inside of her whenever situations like these arise.

They’re on the scene for hours battling the blaze and it’s only near 3 a.m that they finally seem to get a handle on it. All through that time she and Monty have been providing support, fetching and refilling water bottles, providing cold compresses and just being _there_ for their colleagues. 

She finds herself sitting in the back of the ambo with Bellamy when the remains of the building is finally just a smoldering, wet heap of rubble. He’s unzipped his jacket and has his helmet on his lap, hair wet with sweat. His gloves are missing and she watches as he rubs the cramps out of his hand. She sits next to him, her knees drawn up to her chest, and an easy silence between them.

Around them there’s the low buzz of chatter, Pike discussing the case with the police chief, Monty’s soft voice as he chats with Harper, the occasion snap and hiss from the building remains.

Bellamy makes a soft grunt of pain as he flexes his wrist and her eyes snap back to him.

“Lemme see,” she says the same time he assures her, “I’m fine.”

“Nuh uh, you did your job, now let me do mine,” she says, adamant, getting ready to fight him if needed.

He slumps against the side of the ambo. “It really is fine,” he tells her, “It’s just sore that’s all.” He doesn’t put up a fight when Clarke reaches over and grabs it, pulling it into her lap to inspect it.

It’s certainly not the time for this-- it’s _never_ the time for this-- but it’s almost comical how much larger his hand is in her lap as compared to hers. Big and wide with long, thick fingers and roughened skin from years of hard work.

She shifts slightly, focusing on the task at hand.

“I could wrap your wrist if you want,” she says while checking his mobility but he shakes his head.

“Doesn’t make any sense, gonna have to take it off when we get back to the station anyway.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re stubborn.”

He just grins at her tiredly and knocks his foot into hers. “Sorry doc, can’t play patient with me today.”

“Hilarious,” she deadpans and he just grins even wider.

They stay like that for a while, his hand remaining in her lap while he tilts his head back, eyes flickering shut. A moment of peace between them despite all the chaos.

Eventually he does have to leave, his knees creaking as he stands up to head back to the truck.

“Old man,” she teases, swinging her legs over.

He makes a face at her. “You’ll get here eventually, Griffin.”

The ride back to the station is quiet, save for Monty’s soft humming and Clarke finds herself staring out the window at the city as it passes them in a blur. The adrenaline is now wearing off and she finds weariness settling in her bones as she finally breathes easy. She can’t imagine how the others must feel. Clarke and Monty barely did anything but the rest of their squadron was in there for almost three hours.

When they finally get back to the house, they split with Monty heading to the kitchen to make everyone an early breakfast while Clarke flits from person to person with tubes of IcyHot, heat patches, and ibuprofen to help with everyone’s aches and pains. Everyone is a bit sore after a call like that and one by one they traipse out of the showers and settle in front of Clarke so she can deal with all the back pain and stiff muscles.

The only one unaccounted for is Bellamy but Clarke figures he’s probably busy writing his report or something. She can deal with him after. Right now all she wants to do is get out of her sweaty uniform and rinse the smell of smoke from her skin.

Her relationship with the station showers is tumultuous at best. She’s glad they’re there and clean, but they’re also old and the hot water only works some of the time and Clarke rather hurry through with it and then go home to her slightly less shitty shower and do it all over again.

Still, she does wash the smoke out of her hair and gives her body a perfunctory scrub before wrapping herself tight in a towel and pushing the door open.

Her flip flops squelch against the linoleum floor and she can feel the water drip down the back of her neck from her hair, darkening the top of her towel.

She expects the bathroom to be empty, but when she turns the corner she finds Bellamy standing by the sinks as he washes his hands. He notices her a second after she did and he catches her eye in the mirror.

It flicks down, to the flimsy towel she has wrapped around her chest, and she finds herself resisting the urge to rub her thighs together.

He’s clearly showered as well, his hair still a bit damp and curling around his ears, and he’s swapped his cargos for a soft looking AFD t-shirt and some grey sweatpants.

It’s a good look on him she has to admit. The sleeves are tight around his arms and the v neck only serves to emphasize the shape of his clavicle, the breadth of his shoulders.

Clarke realises that she’s staring. And he’s staring right back.

She clears her throat, the sound of it echoing in the silence.

“How’s your wrist?” she asks. She’s been standing in this spot for too long and she can feel the puddle forming at her feet.

A corner of his mouth ticks up. “I told you, it’s fine.”

“Not sore anymore?” She has to steel herself before she walks over, placing her bag on the countertop next to him before grabbing her comb.

“Nope.”

She starts combing through her wet hair, wincing a little every time she runs into a knot. “That’s good.”

His eyes linger on her form as she continues to detangle her hair and Clarke tries to not feel too self conscious about it. It’s the most bare he’s seen her in years.

“You okay?” he asks, crossing his arms and leaning against the sink.

Her hands falter for a moment. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He gives a jerky half shrug. “I don’t know. Figured I should check in on you. Haven’t done that in a while.”

Clarke feels her lips twist into a wry smile. “Trust me, you’d be the first to know if I wasn’t,” she tells him, and he ducks his head as he huffs out a laugh.

She finishes brushing through it and then squeezes it over the sink, getting rid of the excess water. Her skin, previously left cool from the water, feels hot and tight under his gaze.

“Are you okay?” she asks him as she tosses the comb back into her bag.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he mimics her, inching a bit closer and she bites back a grin.

Instead she rolls her eyes dramatically, making sure that he could see it. “You had a long day. Thought I should _check in_.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You started it,” she shoots back and he grins.

“Maybe,” he allows, “Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

She snorts. “Since when do you need an excuse.”

Bellamy hums lights. “I don’t but I figured that for _this_ ,” he slinks behind her and she feels her breath stutter in her throat at the sight of the two of them together in the mirror, “I should probably get an excuse, as flimsy as it is, to continue our ah… _previous_ conversation.”

Her entire body freezes and for a moment she can do nothing but look.

They do look good together, she has to admit.

Bellamy, all tan, freckled skin and dark, curly hair cuts an impressive figure with his sharp lines and muscled physique. And then there’s Clarke, pale and blonde and _soft_ in almost all aspects of the word. The contrast between them is striking.

It does paint a pretty picture though. They look _really_ good together. Like they belong there, at each other’s side.

His fingers barely trail across her neck and Clarke swears to god that she stops breathing.

This reaction doesn’t go unnoticed by Bellamy, who grins wickedly and continues his ministrations, hand trailing down her neck and shoulders and across her clavicle. It finds the loose knot of her towel and he hesitates, just for a moment, but more than enough time for her to stop him.

She does not.

All it takes is one sharp tug and her towel unravels, falling to the floor with a dull ‘fwump’ and leaving her naked in front of him.

They’re both still facing the mirror, his chest to her back, a wall of searing heat behind her. She meets his eyes in the mirror, all hot and wanting, and she gives the slightest incline of a brow, daring him to do something about it.

Bellamy doesn’t miss it of course-- he’s always been quick to pick up on even the subtlest changes in her expressions-- and he chuckles.

“You’ve always been so impatient,” he rumbles out and she can feel the way his chest vibrates with each word.

“Just wondering if all you plan on doing is to stare all day,” she says airily, “Because if it is, let me know now so I can leave. I’m sure I can get the job done on my own.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” he asks, slowly lowering his head. He holds her gaze in their reflection the whole time, lightly kissing her shoulder.

Her skin is already over sensitive and just that slightest touch is enough to make her breath hitch.

Slowly, he starts to kiss up the side of her neck, never once breaking eye contact with her. It adds another level of hotness to this, making her nipples tighten and cunt _ache_. It should be embarrassing just how easy she is for him but Clarke is too turned on to care.

He takes his time, reacquainting himself with her body and revelling in her responses both new and old alike. When his fingers trace the underside of her breast, her breath hitches. When she feels the sharp rasp of stubble on her overly sensitive skin she can’t help but gasp. Bellamy seems to revel in it and wants to pull as many noises as he can from her.

Clarke on the other hand just wants him to get on with it, her thighs clenched together so tight that they’re beginning to hurt.

“I still hate the beard,” she breathes, even as she tilts her head to the side to give him more access.

She feels the scrape of his teeth down her carotid and _whimpers_ , knees buckling a little, and he laughs. “You sure about that, princess?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” His stubble stings when he rubs his cheek against her neck and fuck, she needs him to do something _now_ . All this teasing is driving her out of her _mind_. “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t-- fuck you,” she gasps, tripping over her sentence when he tweaks a nipple, mean.

She feels his grin against her skin, sees the shadow of it in the mirror too. “We’ll get to that later,” he promises, placing a chaste kiss on the spot where her shoulder meets her neck that has her heart ready to somersault out of her chest.

She groans. “Come on Bellamy,” she says, placing one of her hands atop his and trying to pull it away, pull it down to where she is wet and wanting and waiting for him.

He chuckles and places another kiss to the crown of her head. “Alright, alright. But only because you seem hard up for it.” His hand skims down her body, squeezing her hip the same time he sinks blunt teeth into the meat of her shoulder. “Desperate.”

“I’m not-- _fuck_.”

He slides two fingers into her without any preamble or warning, and she keens out loud.

“What was that?” he asks, sounding awfully smug, and she’d hit him or elbow him or do _something_ to him if she wasn’t certain that it would make him stop.

God, if he stopped then Clarke would absolutely _murder_ him.

His hands are bigger than hers, fingers longer and rougher, and there’s a slight sting in the first couple of thrusts as he stretches her out. It’s been a while since Clarke has had anything besides her own hands or a toy. It’s always a hundred times better when someone else is doing it though, especially when it’s someone who _knows_ what they’re doing. 

And Bellamy definitely knows what he’s doing.

His thumb rubs against her clit on each upstroke and he keeps his fingers crooked, aiming for that spot inside of her that makes her see stars.

Even after five and half years he still knows what she likes, that mix of pleasure-pain that gets her _soaked_ for him. He keeps his grip tight on her hip, fingers digging into her flesh and she can’t wait to see the bruises that they’ll leave behind when all this is over.

“Look at you, princess,” he murmurs, “So hot, taking my fingers so well.”

She doesn’t have the voice to respond, consumed by her pleasure, but she knows what he’s talking about. Clarke, naked with her cheeks and neck and chest stained pink, nipples hard and peaked, hair wet and sticking to her skin, looking like molten gold while he fucks her with his hand. While _he’s_ the reason she looks like this in the first place.

Bellamy picks up the pace and she can’t help but groan out his name.

He grins. “You like that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she gasps, nodding frantically, “God, this is so much better. So much better than my dreams and fingers and-- _oh god, right there_.”

He swears, fumbling for a moment but not once does he stop.

“You’ve thought about this, Clarke?” he asks, voice sounding like gravel and making her cunt clench around him. “Have you thought about _me_?”

She nods, a trickle of embarrassment entering the mix and making her feel self conscious all of a sudden.

Bellamy isn’t having any of it. He presses a kiss to her shoulder. “Come on, princess, none of that,” he coos, soothing her. “I just wanna know, that’s all. Ain’t nothing wrong in that.”

“Maybe a little,” she allows, turning her head so her face was half buried in his chest.

Another kiss. “There we go. See that wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

She can’t respond, his finger grinding up against her clit _just so_ and she swears the whole world could catch on fire right now and she wouldn’t notice, not when Bellamy had her like this, ready to hurtle towards an orgasm at any given second.

He seems to take her silence-- or rather her moans and whimpers-- as an answer, and presses a kiss to her head.

“I knew exactly what was going through your head back in the club, princess,” he says, smirking, a mean look on his face and she shudders, his expression going straight to her cunt, turning her on even more. “You were ready to beg for it weren't you.”

“I--”

His fingers rub up inside her, against that spot that knocks the wind out of her, and Clarke feels her knees buckle. She would have fallen if it weren’t for his grip on her body, the way he sandwiched her between the countertop and himself.

She can feel him, hot and hard on her ass through his sweatpants, and she arches her back, rubbing against him.

She feels a twitch of interest and Bellamy swears, redoubling his efforts to make her come.

“No one else makes you feel like this, do they?’ he breathes against her temple, “No one else knows your body like I do.”

She nods, frantic with need. “No one,” she half sobs/ half groans, “Just you, Bell. Only you.”

He crooks his fingers, and she starts to unravel, her walls fluttering around him as she comes hard with his name on her lips.

God, she swears she blacks out for a minute, letting the waves of pleasure crest over her.

Eventually Clarke floats back down, blinking blearily at her surroundings. The sound of her harsh breathing echoes off the walls in the bathroom. Bellamy is supporting most of her weight and she tries her best to straighten up, mewling softly when he slips his fingers out of her.

He shifts a little, putting a bit more space between them and she lets out a shuddering breath, tipping her head back so that it was pressed against his shoulder.

The lust between them settles, leaving a soft, rosy haze in its midst, and he presses his lips to her hairline. It’s surprisingly intimate and her heart does that stupid little stutter-start in her chest again.

They stay like that for a moment, not exactly curled up in each other but pressed close, his hands on her bare skin, his fingers coated in her slick and sticking to her thighs. If she closes her eyes she could pretend that this was five years ago. That Bellamy snuck into the bathroom after her and got her off before her morning class.

But it’s not five years ago and things have changed.

He steps back, clearing his throat. “Get dressed,” he tells her, gruff.

She meets his eye in the mirror. “What about you?” she asks, her gaze flicking to the prominent bulge in his pants for a second before flicking back up.

A glimpse of a smile makes itself known. “Raincheck,” he quips, and she rolls her eyes.

“You are so full of it.”

He shrugs, unashamed. “Maybe.” Their eyes meet one last time. “Get changed Clarke. People are going to start wondering where we are.”

Bellamy leaves and then it’s just Clarke and a leaky faucet standing naked in the middle of their communal bathroom.

* * *

Just like the day after the incident in the kitchen, when Clarke shows up to work the next day Bellamy acts as though nothing has changed between them, as if he didn’t have his fingers knuckle deep in her cunt and coaxed an orgasm out of her with filthy-sweet words.

Clarke lingers in the doorway for a moment and ends up catching his eye and the corners of his lips twitch as if he was holding back a smirk.

Her face immediately goes bright red and she turns on heel and all but runs out of there to put her stuff in her locker, spending more time than necessary in the tiny, cramped room to get a hold of herself.

So what if he got her off in the bathroom last time they were on shift? It’s not like it _meant_ anything.

Friends can get friends off.

You know, platonically.

Platonic orgasms.

God that sounds even more ridiculous than she thought it would.

Clarke groans and softly bangs her head against the cold metal, berating herself under her breath.

She ignores it for the rest of their shift, interacting with Bellamy as normal and doing her best to ignore the lingering touches and subtle innuendos and stupid quips that he _knows_ always makes her laugh. She’s being completely professional about it. She’s not going to let a stupid little hook up that probably meant nothing in the first place get to her head.

Their shift ends and then a day later they’re back for another.

And then another.

And by the third shift after that little _rendezvous_ in the bathroom, Clarke is _pissed off_.

(Maybe she let the hook up get to her head. Just a little bit.)

She’s seething as she yanks open the refrigerator door to grab the milk, her movements rough and jerky as she stews about everything that’s happened between them in the past few weeks.

The more she thinks about it, the more she’s certain that Bellamy is doing this-- all of this, from that moment in the kitchen to fingering her in the bathroom-- just to get under her skin.

It’s the only logical explanation.

And the worst part is, she’s been _letting_ him.

He gets to toy with her and Clarke sits there (or stands there as the case may be) and takes it just because there’s the slightest bit of attraction blooming between them. He gets to tease her and mess with her mind and she allows it.

So Clarke decides that she’s not going to anymore.

She’s not going to be passive or hide from him or pretend that this is all normal because it’s not.

She’s going to meet Bellamy tit for tat and give him just as much as he’s been giving her.

She spends the rest of her shift concocting her plan, trying her best to figure out the intricacies of it all, the best way to carry through with it so that she’s on his mind just as much as he’s on hers these days. She wants him to be able to think of nothing else besides her.

Clarke gets an opportunity to set things in motion later that evening when there’s a lull in things at the station. They’ve been responding to a bunch of calls recently, most of them non life threatening thank goodness, but it still needs to be recorded and that means he still needs to write a full report. 

He’s locked up in his office working on those while the rest of the house naps or relaxes or watches tv and Clarke figures that he could probably use a break.

It’s easy for her to unfurl herself from the couch where Raven and Harper were watching an episode of _Keeping up with the Kardashians_ and tell them that she’s going to carry a snack for Bellamy. They wave her off absentmindedly, neither of them too concerned with her. It’s a well known fact in the house by now that Clarke and Bellamy do these things, buying lunch or nagging the other to eat something when they feel as though they’ve been neglecting it. Monty calls it flirting, even after Clarke explained that no, this is their way of getting even with each other.

(They all call it flirting behind their backs, having quickly grown accustomed to the weirdness between the two of them. But Clarke doesn’t know that.)

She does make him some coffee though, and grabs one of those puffed rice cake things that he likes so much. She doesn’t understand why. She thinks they’re bland and tastes like something you’d give to an infant but Bellamy likes it.

She doesn’t bother to knock on his office door, just throws the whole thing wide open, and his head snaps up, eyes wide and looking like a deer caught in headlights.

She tips the coffee cup towards him. “I brought sustenance,” she says, kicking the door shut behind her.

He’s sitting at his desk which is covered by loose pages and file jackets, a small metal cup holding his pens hanging precariously off the edge of the desk and an empty mug sitting next to it. He has on his glasses too, black square frames that are sliding down his nose a little.

The corner of his mouth flicks up in a half-smile. “Clarke Griffin, my hero.”

She flashes him a quick grin and pads across the room to get to him. He takes it from her hand with a muffled thank you and Clarke perches herself on top of his desk, earning an eye roll.

She takes in the mountain of work that surrounds him as he slurps down the coffee, trailing her hand across a file for a small electrical fire due to some home improvements gone wrong yesterday.

“How’s it all coming along?” she asks, swinging her feet. His chair is pretty close to her and if her toe brushes against his leg ever so often then so be it.

He lets out a long gust of air. “It’s coming,” he sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face.

“Stressed?” she asks, offering him a sympathetic wince.

“You have no idea,” he says with a wry smile.

Clarke hums and starts to straighten up his desk a bit-- place the cap on his pen, paperclip a few loose pages together, fix his stacks so they don’t look as though they’re going to cause an avalanche at any given moment.

“Maybe you should take a break,” she tells him, tossing the wrapper in the nearby bin.

“Can’t.” He slouches back in his seat for a moment. “Too much work.”

“Maybe I should have been a bit more clear,” she murmurs as she sinks to the ground, earning a sharp gasp when she places a delicate hand on his knee, “I’m making you take a break.”

He lets out a measured breath. “Clarke.”

“Bellamy.”

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice carefully controlled to not give anything away.

She gives him a toothy smile from her position on the floor, kneeling in front of him. “I figured what better time than now to collect on that raincheck,” she murmurs, running her hands up his thighs. She feels the way his muscles tense under her touch and it sends even more of a rush through her.

He licks his lips, trying his best to keep it all together, but she sees the way his eyes go dark, pupils blown wide. “You figured, huh? What about _I_ want, princess?”

Her fingers play with the button of his pants. “Are you saying that you _don’t_ want this?” she asks coyly, already knowing the answer.

His hand is curled into a fist resting on the armrest of his desk chair. “I didn’t say that.”

“So what’s the problem here then?” she asks, propping her chin up on his knee and gazing up at him with wide blue eyes. “Don’t you want me to make you feel good?”

He curses low under his breath and Clarke knows she’s close to getting what she wants. He used to tell her that there was just something about the way she looked at him from on her knees, those innocent baby blues a sharp contrast to the way he stretched out her mouth that made him go crazy.

It’s nice to know that that hasn’t changed in the past five years or so.

“We’re at work,” he warns her, and she flicks open the button to his trousers.

“So I’ll be quick then,” she says before giving his cock a squeeze hello through his boxers. He’s already half hard.

“Clarke,” he says, trying one last time.

“Relax Bellamy,” she tells him, “Let me do this for you. I want to.”

He exhales slowly, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m so fucked,” he mumbles mostly to himself but she catches it anyway and grins.

“You’re about to be,” she promises, and then finally gets her hand on him, giving him a nice slow stroke to get him just how she wants him.

He’s always been gorgeous, long and thick with a nice curve that hits her just right when he fucked her, especially from behind. It’s been a while since she’s done this with someone, but it’s not exactly rocket science. And besides, she quickly learnt that she liked doing it with _Bellamy_ back when they were dating. He always made it worth her while.

She runs her thumb over the head and his hips jerk, a hand landing heavy on her head. She pushes up into it, needing him to tangle his fingers in her hair, and he does just that.

She works him until he’s nice and hard, his skin hot against her palm, and then she leans in to nuzzle his hip bone, thumb sweeping over the precum gathering at his slit.

“Fuck princess,” he breathes, letting his head tip back and eyes drift shut. God, she’s barely even started and he already sounds wrecked.

She gives him a soft lick hello, savouring the familiar taste of him on her tongue, and she hears the way his breath hitches above her.

Clarke really gets her mouth on him now, sucking gently enough to tease the both of them. His hands are still in her hair, just resting there, not guiding her in any way and giving her free control of the rate and rhythm of the bob of her head. He’s salty and earthy and she finds herself moaning at the taste, drawing out a groan from him.

“You’re so fucking good at that,” he tells her, and his hand twitches, tugging her hair for just a second. “So fucking pretty too. Absolutely gorgeous on your knees in front of me with my cock in your mouth, princess.”

His words go straight to her cunt and she already feels the slick building between her legs. This is what she likes best about sucking him off. Bellamy already has a filthy mouth but there’s just something about the way it gets even dirtier whenever she gets her mouth on him.

She focuses on the head, moving her mouth up and down and then jacking her hand along the rest of him that’s too far for her to reach.

If this was another lifetime, one where there isn’t a mangle mess of history and ugly feelings strewn between them, one where she’s always just been with Bellamy, she’d let him fuck her mouth.

They’d done it maybe about three times while they were dating and she knows for a fact that it drives him wild. Drives her wild too, begging him to use her and watch as he littered enough praise on her to turn her pink, slowly losing himself above. But he’s always been careful-- too careful in her opinion-- to not hurt her and he’s always been too selfless to take what he wants, even if she was offering it up freely for his own pleasure.

Clarke glances up to find him already looking at her with half lidded eyes and she sucks a bit harder.

“Fuck,” he swears, sounding more like a plea than anything else. His hips rise up just a little bit in response and for one thrilling second she’s hopeful, but then he gains control once more.

A bit disappointing but that’s fine. Clarke figures that next time she could maybe broach the subject with him and then the time after that she can beg him to do it.

“God your mouth,” he groans out, “Fucking perfect, baby.”

She swirls her tongue around the head and he moans with it.

“You’re so good, Clarke. So fucking good,” he pants, tightening his grip on her hair as he slouches a bit lower in his chair for her. She bets that by now he’s probably completely ruined her braid. “Doing such a good job. Fuck, you’re gonna make me come.”

His words leave her skin stained with pleasure, settling heavy and hot in her stomach. Bellamy always knows what to say to her, always knows the easiest ways to get her going.

If this was before she’d probably have a her fingers on her clit by now, or beg him to fuck her after which he’d immediately agree to, but it’s not like that and _they_ are not like that. So Clarke keeps her hands to herself, using them to work his length while she strokes his frenulum with her tongue, sending him wordless for a moment.

It’s still nice though. She _likes_ being responsible for him feeling good.

She takes him deeper in her mouth, throat fluttering around him and his hips stutter as he swears something absolutely filthy above her.

“Shit, fuck,” he fumbles. The veins in his neck are distended and there’s a pretty blush darkening the tan skin across his cheekbones. “Clarke, princess, _fuck_.”

She can feel the way his thighs clench under her hand and she pulls back, focusing all her attention on the head of his cock as his breathing picks up. Clarke keeps her eyes on him the entire time, taking in the way he struggles to keep his open, the way he bites down on his lip the closer he gets to that precipice.

Bellamy comes with a long, unbroken moan that sounds almost as sweet as her name and the pretty praises he graced her with, and Clarke swallows diligently, licking the underside of his shaft and cleaning him up with soft kitten licks.

“Fuck,” he says when he manages to breath again, and she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Her jaw is aching but that’s okay. It’s a sweet pain.

“Good?” she asks, and her voice sounds hoarse to her own ears. Her hair is falling out of her braid and she yanks the elastic out of it.

“Good,” he snorts, tapping the side of her ass as she stands up and making her flush, “Now you’re just fishing for compliments.”

She steals a half empty bottle of water from his desk and takes a sip, swishing it around her mouth before swallowing. “I am not.”

“Sure,” he drawls, looking up at her with dark eyes. He’s still slumped in his chair and he wears a hungry look on his face.

Clarke is suddenly conscious of the slick between her thighs and the empty ache in her cunt.

Bellamy reaches for her the same time she steps forward, and the momentum of it throws her balance off. She ends up falling onto him as she grasps at his shoulders, placing their faces mere inches apart as his chair makes a god awful screeching sound that neither of them pay heed to.

His hands settle on her hips, slipping a muscled thigh between her own and shit, it would be so easy for her grind her cunt on him, all dirty and wet and fucking get off because god knows she needs it--

The bell goes off, startling the two of them apart as the intercom crackles with news of an accident for them to attend to.

Bellamy swears as he does up his fly and grabs his jacket and Clarke finds herself flushing down to her toes, throwing her hair up into a sloppy ponytail, no time left to try and salvage her braid.

“I think I owe you one,” he tells her, voice gruff, as they race towards the garage where everyone is quickly getting ready to respond to the call.

Monty throws her pack towards her and Clarke catches it, holding his gaze for a second longer. “I’ll hold you to that.”

His hand reaches out, quick as anything, and gives her hip a squeeze. “Good,” says Bellamy before jogging off to join the others in the truck as Raven starts her up. 

Clarke does the same, joining Monty in the ambo as they race after them, sirens blaring, and for once, her heart isn’t racing because of the adrenaline filling her veins, but because of him.

Bellamy.

If she thought she was fucked before, well, she’s even more fucked now.

**Author's Note:**

> you can come and pester me about it this fic on [tumblr](http://hiddenpolkadots.tumblr.com)


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